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A YEAR AS A 
GOVERNMENT AGENT 





MRS. NORMAN DE R. WHITEHOUSE AND SONNY 



A YEAR AS 
A GOVERNMENT AGENT 



By 
VIRA B. WHITEHOUSE 

(Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse) 

Direetor for Switzerland of the Committee on 

Public Information in igi8 



Fully Illustrated 




HARPER ^ BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
M C M X X 



J?43 



M 161920 



A Year As a Government Ageni 



Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States ol America 

Published, January, 1920 

M-T 



:i)C!A559407 



I dedicate this account of my year as a government 
agent to two friends: 

To Qeorge Creel whose freedom from prejudice and 
whose courage in combatting the prejudices of others 
made possible the work herein recorded. 

And to Clarence Day, Jr., luithout whose interest, en- 
couragement and — yes, nagging, 1 should never have had 
the presumption to write of it. 



# 






CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. My appointment i 

II. Diplomatic methods 22 

III. The vanishing news service 4^ 

IV. Apparent defeat 70 

V. To America and back 91 

VI. At work Ill 

VII. Success under difficulties 136 

VIII. One thing after another 160 

IX. Swiss problems 180 

X. The approaching end 201 

XI. Grief and adventure 222 

XII. Strife and confusion 248 

XIII. The end of the year 267 

Appendices 289 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



1s/[RS. Norman DE R. V/hiTEHOUSE and Sonny . . Frontispiece 

Looking into the Lauterbrunnen Valley, with 

THE StaUBBACH, FROM THE WeNGERNALP RAILWAY Facing p. 14 

The QUAINT Kesslergasse in Berne, Switzerland, 

WITH the spire OF THE CATHEDRAL TO THE RIGHT ' * 54 

Bridge leading to the Zurich railroad station. 
The Swiss National Museum is seen on the 

right-hand side, next to the station ... " 68 

Sonny " io8 

Dr. Felix Calonder " no 

A Lucerne milkman " 152 

Lucerne. The new bridge with the pilatus . . " 162 

The ancient Zeitglockenturm, Berne, Switzerland " 217 
Market-day on the Parliament Square at Berne, 

Switzerland " 254 

The House of Parliament in Berne, Switzerland " 260 

Panorama of Berne seen from the Schauzli . . " 276 



/ 



A YEAR AS A 
GOVERNMENT AGENT 



A YEAR AS A 
GOVERNMENT AGENT 

CHAPTER I 

MY APPOINTMENT 

AT the time our country went into the great 
-*^ war Switzerland had become known as 
the center of international war intrigue. Wild 
stories were heard about the activities there of 
German spies and of the plots and propaganda 
with which they were busy. The general situa- 
tion in Switzerland was recognized in diplomatic 
circles as complicated and difficult, because of 
that coimtry's geographical and political posi- 
tion. There it was, a little neutral state in the 
very middle of Europe, surrounded by warring 
countries, the meeting-place of the representa- 
tives of all those countries. It was not strange 
that it was nervous about its security and jealous 
of its neutrality. 

When I was appointed to direct the work of 
the Committee on Public Information in that 



2 A Year as a Government Agent 

particular country many people were undoubt- 
edly surprised. What experience could a woman 
have had to fit her for such work in so delicate 
a situation? The mere fact that a woman was 
chosen was in itself enough to cause comment. 
Of course, sex had really nothing to do with the 
fitness of the choice. The time had come when 
liberal men recognized that there is no sex in 
ability, and when conscientious men wanted 
their country's work done by the people they 
thought most capable to do it. Whether I was 
the most capable person is quite another question, 
and that question was one for George Creel, the 
Chairman of the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion, to decide. Mr. Creel is a liberal man and 
free from the usual prejudice against placing 
women in positions of responsibility. He knew 
my ability to work hard, because he had worked 
with me in the 191 5 New York State Women 
Suffrage campaign. In fact, when he asked me 
to go he said it was because he remembered how 
hard I had made him work. I had slave-driven 
him, he said. On my part, when the position was 
offered me I accepted it without hesitation, and 
I should have done so even if I could have fore- 
seen the loneliness, the difficulties, and the 
strange obstacles I was to meet. I had learned 
in the suffrage campaigns in which I had worked 
that one of the great stimibling-blocks to the 
advance of women is our very general reluctance 
to accept responsibility. Since the beginning of 



My Appointment 3 

the world we have been hypnotized and have 
hypnotized ourselves into a doubt of our ability. 
I had talked to other women so often about the 
necessity of assuming responsibility, and accept- 
ing other people's judgment as to our own abil- 
ity, that I could not hesitate on that score. I 
had also taken the war very seriously from the 
beginning. Every phase of suffering for which 
it was responsible had pictured itself vividly to 
my imagination. I had longed to join the wom- 
en who were doing their share directly to help 
toward the final victory, although I had never 
had any dreams of being a heroine, of nursing at 
the very front imder shell-fire, or of inspiring 
others to deeds of bravery. I knew that my part 
at best would be only hard, unpicturesque work 
at an office desk in safety. But I wanted to do 
what I could. During the first years of the war 
there was no question of it. I was working with 
every ounce of energy I possessed for democracy 
at home — to pass the stiffrage amendment in 
New York State. 

I felt comparatively free when the amendment 
was adopted in November, 191 7. The following 
month, after having finished a thousand and one 
details left over from the campaign, having 
helped make and put into operation plans for 
educational and patriotic work for the suffrage 
organization, I went to a National American 
Women Suffrage convention in^Washington, and 
while there I saw George Creel, 



4 A Year as a Government Agent 

I told him I wanted to do some war-work. He 
said it was a strange coincidence that he was 
about to write to me to ask me to go as repre- 
sentative of the Committee on PubHc Informa- 
tion to South America or to Switzerland. I at 
once refused the first suggestion, because I be- 
lieved that the general attitude toward women in 
South America would make such work on the 
part of a woman impracticable. The suggestion 
that I should go to Switzerland interested me 
immensely, although I knew little about that 
country. I had been there several times as a 
tourist. I had a vague idea of its general out- 
line and position in the middle of Europe. I 
knew a large proportion of it was mountains — 
high, bare, and beautiful. Of course, I knew 
that all Switzerland is divided into three parts 
which speak respectively Italian, French, and 
German. But I eagerly looked in the en- 
cyclopedia to see what proportion there is of 
each and was surprised to find that of the 
twenty-two cantons all but seven have a 
majority of German-speaking population, and 
most of these are entirely German-speaking, 
and that Italian is spoken in only one or two. 
Its size and the number of its inhabitants 
interested me immensely, because I had just 
been chairman of a victorious campaign in a 
state of about 50,000 square miles, with about 
10,000,000 inhabitants. I wanted to compare 
the two territories. I was pleased to find 



My Appointment 5 

that Switzerland is about one-third the size in 
area of New York State, and has a population 
about two-thirds that of New York City. This 
latter statement would probably be contra- 
dicted by a Swiss, if it should be brought to his 
attention, as not being accurate. Once, in 
Switzerland, I spoke of its population as being, 
roughly speaking, about 4,000,000. ''Oh no," I 
was told, ''not at all!" I wondered. Hadn't I 
seen not once, but many times, the population 
put at 3,800,000? Had my memory begun to 
fail me? I said, "I've seen it put at 3,800,000." 
"Yes," they said, "about 3,800,000, but not 
about 4,000,000!" 

I knew it was the oldest republic, but when I 
went there I was constantly surprised at the dif- 
ferences between our form of government and 
theirs. They have two federal houses, as we 
have, but their President is not a president as 
ours is, elected by the whole people at a national 
election. Their President is really a committee 
of seven, the Federal Council, chosen by the two 
houses. The raan who is called President is the 
chairman of the Federal Council of seven, with a 
one-year term. Later, I was to learn how in 
some ways they are more progressive than we, 
and in others very much more conservative. 

This was as little as I knew of the Republic of 
Switzerland, although I had worked for several 
years in a cause that had aroused my interest 
particularly in governmental forms. 



6 A Year as a Government Agent 

The arrangements for my departure at first 
proceeded smoothly and qiiickly. I made two 
conditions — ^that I should be expected to do only 
such work as would be legitimate and friendly 
in the eyes of the Swiss, and that I should have 
a recognized official position with the title of 
representative or director for Switzerland of the 
Committee on Public Information. These con- 
ditions Mr. Creel readily accepted.^ My duties 
were to be the handling and distribution to news 
agencies and the press in Switzerland of cable and 
wireless news dealing with events in America, the 
preparation of special articles and pamphlets, 
the showing of motion-picture reels, etc.; in 
fact, such activities as would put before the 
people of a neutral country the aims and ideals 
of America at war, and the manner in which she 
was putting them into effect, and, also, the send- 
ing, in return, to America of articles about 
Switzerland and Swiss affairs from Swiss writers. 
There were no detailed instructions as to how I 
was to do this work. I had not sought them — I i 
wanted to be as unhampered as possible in work- 
ing out conditions as I should find them in a 
strange coimtry. 

I was ready to go at a day's notice. Mr. 
Creel and I agreed that we should seek to avoid 
publicity as to my going, but he prepared a 
statement for me to give out in case it seemed 
wise. He gave me a letter of appointment,^ as 

* Appendix I, 'Appendix II. 



My Appointment 7 

representative of the Committee on Public In- 
formation, and in this letter he said that the 
State Department was cabling both the Ameri- 
can embassy in Paris and the legation in Berne, 
informing them of my departure, so that they 
would be prepared for my arrival. He assured 
me that I should have a diplomatic passport. It 
all seemed simple and easy, and I thought I was 
about to sail without a hitch, when one night 
I was awakened by a reporter at the telephone, 
who said that Mr. Creel had made a public 
statement of my appointment. I was surprised, 
in view of our agreement, and, not understand- 
ing the situation, I refused to comment. The 
next day there were long and inaccurate ac- 
counts in some of the New York daily papers. 
These were followed by an announcement in 
one paper that Mr. Lansing, Secretary of State, 
objected to the appointment of a woman to 
such a position and, in fact, that there was 
general opposition on the part of the State 
Department to] the foreign activities which the 
Committee on Public Information was about 
to organize. There was a prompt denial by 
Mr. Lansing. 

My passport, when it came, was not a diplo- 
matic passport. Mr. Creel imdertook to set the 
matter straight and assured me again that a 
diplomatic passport would be forwarded to me 
by >special messenger and reach me before I 
sailed. I expected it up to the very minute of 



8 A Year as a Government Agent 

leaving, but finally went without it. And that is 
the way my troubles began. 

In the mean time, my friends, having heard of 
the difficult living conditions abroad, had looked 
after my comfort. They gave me sweaters and 
woolly jackets and warm lined gloves, canned 
heat, boxes of sugar, and everything one was 
supposed to need and not be able to obtain when 
one went across the sea. Among my husband's 
contributions was a big box of chocolates which 
he himself had carefully chosen, because every 
one knew that there was no candy to be had in 
France, through which country I was going. 
After a number of delays in sailing, a day came 
when the ship was really ready. My husband 
and little girl went with me to the dock. It was 
cold and windy. We parted at the gang-plank. 
I boarded the ship alone and waved them good-by 
from the deck. I saw them walk down the dock 
arm in arm, my little girl's skirts a trifle too 
short, my husband's overcoat a little too big in 
the back, and my large box of chocolates being 
carried away, held tightly under his arm. 

All afternoon I watched the loading of the 
ship with coal from scows. The coal was hardly 
more than black dust and over the heaps and 
hollows made by the huge swinging scoops two 
little long-tailed dogs played happily. One was 
a very dirty little dog, but the other had the 
shiniest black satin coat in the world. It grew 
dark and I went supperless to my bunk. About 



My Appointment 9 

midnight we sailed, and I was off to work for 
my country. 

The trip seemed unreal, because it was so ex- 
actly like the stories I had read of ocean crossings 
in war-time. It made me think especially of The 
Martial Adventures of Henry and Me. There 
were the Red Cross workers, there was the 
large contingent of Y. M. C. A. men and women. 
There were the dark decks, the closed port-holes 
— everything just as in the stories. To give our 
particular crossing a little individuality, there 
were six hundred Polish troops in the Steerage, 
and in our cabin a group of yoimg Polish officers, 
who, like story-book Poles, were filled with the 
wrongs of Poland and the most patriotic deter- 
mination to right them. There was a man who 
had been on one of the steamers sunk by a Ger- 
man submarine before we went into the war, 
who had been rescued unconscious after being in 
the water for hours. There were others who had 
crossed when there were alarms and who them- 
selves had seen submarines. There was a great 
deal of nervous talk about the danger of sub- 
marines. 

The first night in the danger zone I must con- 
fess to going to bed with a delightful sensation of 
excitement, as on Christmas Eve when I was a 
child. The next morning, when I waked up after 
a sound sleep, I was a little disappointed that 
nothing thrilling had happened. I took myself 
to task. A pacifist who hates wars and hopes 



lo A Year as a Government Agent 

that they will be abolished from the face of the 
earth had no right to feel as I did. 

We had no sooner left New York than there 
were rumors on board that I was some kind 
of a spy, going abroad to work for our country. 
The very name of the Committee on Public In- 
formation, which was at that time a new depart- 
ment of the government and not generally 
known, seemed to suggest to everyone (by the 
principle of contraries, I suppose) that its work 
was secret intelligence. I always resented very 
intensely such suspicions, but it was no use. 
They cropped up to the very end. When I was 
in London, on my way to sail from Liverpool 
for America, after my work was done, the cor- 
respondent of the Associated Press greeted me 
with, ''You have been working as a spy in 
Switzerland, haven't you?*' And, as always, I 
made a scene. Spies may be a necessary part of 
war machinery. Undoubtedly their work is 
often dangerous and calls for the highest degree 
of discretion and courage and patriotism, and, of 
course, must be of value in saving many lives. I 
have been asked why I so particularly resent 
being thought a spy. It is partly because I dis- 
like secret and devious ways and the false rela- 
tions with people which cannot be avoided in the 
effort to obtain secret information, but especially 
I hate the whole system of spying, because I be- 
lieve it is one of the old, wrong methods which 
the world is about to outgrow. 



My Appointment 



II 



On the steamer from the beginning the pas- 
sengers fell into groups. The Red Cross people 
drew together and talked over their plans. The 
Y. M. C. A. held meetings, and the near-sighted 
yotmg society man who was going over with 
them merely for an experience grew intimate 
with the clergyman who said that "no member 
of the association whose middle name is Chris- 
tian" should smoke or coimtenance smoking. 
The Polish officers talked together of the wrongs 
of Poland. I foimd that I, alone, with my vague 
problems of publicity in a foreign country tinder 
imknown conditions, had no one with whom to 
share them. At night, in my bunk, the job 
looked very big and nebulous. 

We landed in Bordeaux early one morning, and 
a little later I left for Paris. In the few hours 
there in Bordeaux I saw the first of the war 
conditions that we had all been reading about. 
There, too, things were just as the war stories 
described them. There were the women conduct- 
ors on the street-cars with stem, business-like 
faces; they were the first I had seen. There was 
the heavy brown bread, the coffee without sugar, 
and, worst of all, the war cripples on the streets. 
On the trip to Paris, which I was later to know 
so well, I sat in a dilapidated railroad carriage 
and was impressed chiefly by the cutting down 
of the trees all along the line. 

We arrived in Paris late at night. Two yoimg 
men, who had crossed on the steamer and who 



12 A Year as a Government Agent 

were going to drive arabulances for the Red 
Cross, went with me in a red taxicab such as we 
were all familiar with before the war, and left 
me at a hotel near the Place Venddme, where I 
had often stayed before. We had been told that 
the hotels in Paris were crowded. But here there 
was room for me, one flight up on the comer. I 
went to bed tired, but satisfied that the first 
stage of my journey was over. 

If one tells the story of one's experiences to 
others for any profit or interest there may be in 
it, I suppose it is necessary to be frank about all 
one's weaknesses. So I must tell you that I am 
shy — that I have always been shy. I hate to ask 
the way or buy the tickets. When I was a child 
I must have been a constant mortification to my 
parents. I wouldn't show off. When I was ex- 
hibited to strangers along with my rosy-cheeked, 
curly-haired, friendly sister the best I could do 
was to cry. I was even abnormally shy. 

I have overcome it in many directions. I have 
learned to go to social fimctions of all kinds 
without a catch of the breath. I have learned 
to make suffrage speeches even on street comers 
with less than the first agony. But overcoming 
shyness in one direction does not help very much 
when it comes to activities of a new sort. 

When I waked the first morning in Paris I 
felt busy and interested enough, but desperately 
shy. I had letters from the French Mission in 
Washington to the Maison de la Presse in Paris. 



My Appointment 13 

From them I was to find out everything I could 
about Switzerland, especially what our friends 
and enemies were doing there in the way of pub- 
licity and propaganda. I was also to obtain in- 
formation about various matters for Mr. Creel's 
committee, there being then no representative of 
the Committee on Public Information in France. 
All this I was to do in my halting French, which 
had not seen the light of day for four long pre- 
occupied years. I went straight to the Maison 
de la Presse. I saw one busy but polite gentle- 
man after another. My hands perspired freely 
and my French halted more and more. Appoint- 
ments were made for me to see other gentlemen, 
who would be at my disposal later. I was passed 
on with letters to other departments. I was 
vastly impressed by the politeness and desire of 
each gentleman to assist and co-operate, but it 
all went with a slowness and deliberation that 
appalled me, especially as, in my ignorance of 
war-time formalities, I had planned to leave Paris 
for Switzerland the following day. According to 
my instructions, I went to the American em- 
bassy to call upon Ambassador Sharpe, and 
showed him my letter of appointment, which 
said so plainly that he would be notified of my 
arrival and appointment. He had not been noti- 
fied, but was polite and helpful in every way^ 
giving me letters to the French authorities to 
facilitate my passport formalities. These for- 
malities I went at with real American vigor. 



14 A Year as a Government Agent 

They meant visits to the American consulate, 
to the French Prefecture of PoHce, and to the 
Swiss consulate, which had to be visited in the 
order given. The consulates were not open be- 
fore ten o'clock in the morning, all three were 
closed between twelve and two and on Simdays 
and holidays. They were as far apart as the 
confines of Paris allowed, and at all of them you 
had to wait in a line. Especially at the French 
Prefecture of Police the waiting was long and 
tedious and the red-tape of unbelievable pro- 
portions, even with a letter from the Ameri- 
can ambassador to vouch for my respectability 
and to ask for special courtesy and consideration. 
I have not read any adequate accoimts of these 
dreary, fatiguing, time-consuming formalities, 
which were so much a part of traveling in war- 
times, but no literary skill could exaggerate their 
difficulties. With a diplomatic passport they 
were all avoided, or were looked after by em- 
bassy or legation employees and time was saved 
for a busy worker. 

The energy which took me through it all in 
record time came from the desire, which had 
been v/axing strong for many months, to work for 
my country. Switzerland was my goal, and no 
red-tape, even French red-tape, was going to 
delay me long. In three days I was ready to 
start and actually started ! I had had my pass- 
port visaed in regular form, I had seen the cour- 
teous French officials of the Maison de la Presse, 



My Appointment 15 

and had run to earth the information Mr. Creel 
wanted, though it had meant many interviews. 
But passport formahties and foreign business 
methods were not the only difficulties I had had 
to face. 

The newspaper announcements of opposition 
in the State Department to my appointment and 
the failiire of the diplomatic passport to arrive 
should have put me on my guard. Perhaps they 
had, but I was surprised when, the day after I 
reached Paris, I received a note from our em- 
bassy inclosing a copy of a cable ^ which had 
been sent from Washington to be given to me. 
This was the second stage of my troubles, and if 
you are going to follow my efforts to work for our 
coimtry, I suppose, although it is very tiresome, 
it must be explained to you. The cable began 
by quoting from a communication which had 
been sent some days before from Switzerland 
by Mr. Hugh Wilson, charge d'affaires of the 
American legation there, to the vState Depart- 
ment in Washington. Mr. Hugh Wilson said 
that an annoimcement had been made in the 
Swiss press that Norman Whitehouse had been 
appointed to a mission in Switzerland for propa- 
ganda purposes. He said that the pro-German 
press of Switzerland was discussing this appoint- 
ment unfavorably, saying that Switzerland 
wanted wheat, not words, from the United 
States. I learned later that the opposition, 

* Appendix III. 



1 6 A Year as a Government Agent 

which appeared very considerable in the cable, 
consisted of a paragraph published in La Feuilhy 
a paper printed in Geneva, strongly pro-German 
and commonly believed to be owned or financed 
by the Germans and reprinted in some of the 
smaller pro-German papers. Because of this op- 
position on the part of the hostile press, Mr. 
Hugh Wilson cabled that he considered it of 
extreme importance that he should be authorized 
to make a formal statement denying the inten- 
tion of the American government to establish a 
propaganda bureau in Switzerland, and, since 
Whitehouse*s name had been mentioned, it was 
important that he should not come. Thus 
would diplomats let our enemies' objections 
shape our plans. Why should any one have ex- 
pected our enemy to welcome an effort to put 
the truth before the world? No suffrage cam- 
paigner would have ! The Washington cable con- 
tinued setting forth for my information the 
answer which had been sent from there to Mr. 
Hugh Wilson in Berne, evidently to give him the 
official announcement for which he had asked. 
It was that the untrue statements in regard to 
Norman Whitehouse's mission were doubtless 
based upon the fact that Mrs. Norman White- 
house had been selected by a department of the 
United States government to visit France, 
Switzerland, and England for the purpose of 
studying conditions relating to women and chil- 
dren. The cable was signed, ''Polk, Acting' ' 



My Appointment 17 

Secretary of State. Can you imagine how I felt? 
I was not sure at first what it meant. Could the 
object of my appointment have been changed 
without a word to me? No, it did not seem pos- 
sible. On the other hand, the cable might mean 
that I was to do my work secretly under the pre- 
tense of studying the conditions of women and 
children. I did not like either solution! I had 
been so careful to provide that I should do only 
legitimate work of a certain kind in an official 
manner. It was strange that I should have made 
that particular provision, as if I had foreseen 
this very complication; and yet, in spite of it, 
here I was being publicly introduced as a student 
of the conditions of women and children, when I 
had started off to organize and direct simple 
government publicity. 

Away in Paris I could not believe that Mr. 
Creel knew anything of this communication. I 
cabled immediately to him,^ asking him to see 
the message which Mr. Hugh Wilson had sent 
from Berne to the State Department, and also 
the answer from Mr. Polk to Mr. Hugh Wilson, 
misstating the object of my appointment. I 
said I was confident that he, Mr. Creel, would 
insist that the State Department should cable 
corrections to the Berne legation and to the 
Paris embassy of the purpose of my appoint- 
ment. I said my work was legitimate and that 
I refused to work under false pretenses. I ex- 

* Appendix IV. 
2 



1 8 A Year as a Government Agent 

plained also in this cable that no previous an- 
nouncement of my appointment had been sent 
to Ambassador Sharpe, as stated in my letter of 
appointment. 

I learned later from both Mr. Polk and Mr. 
Creel that the latter had known of the message 
before it was sent. But he had other troubles to 
worry him by that time. 

My memory of those few days in Paris is all a 
jumble of effort, discouragement, and homesick- 
ness. I saw no one I had ever seen before. 
There was no one with whom I could talk over 
my difficulties. In the suffrage campaigns there 
had been the vice-chairmen, the secretaries, and 
the treasurer and the chairmen of sections, and 
six thousand other officers! There was always 
some one of them with whom to consult and the 
talking over made ever3rthing seem easier. I 
haven't a doubt that if I had had a companion 
to discuss it with, the mere mention of the con- 
dition of women and children would have 
brought a laugh. As it was, I was as solemn as 
an owl about it all, and I felt very far away from 
home and friends. Quite late one night I re- 
member lying in bed and tviming over in my 
mind every homesick thought that a lonely person 
could conjiu*e up, when along the street walked 
a man whistling, quite beautifvilly, ''Home, Sweet 
Home." I turned my face to the wall and 
wanted to die! 

But, instead, next night I went to Switzerland. 



My Appointment 19 

The hotel porter put me on the train, with my 
bags, gave me my tickets and instructions, and 
off I went. If you are an orderly person and had 
to travel in Etirope in January, 191 8, undoubt- 
edly you could have done so more or less com- 
fortably by making your plans several weeks in 
advance and obtaining a place in one of the rare 
couchettes, or wagon-lits. But I sat up that 
night with five other persons in a first-class 
French railway compartment. I had a comer 
seat, and, as it was before I had had one of my 
feet frost-bitten, I spent the night in compara- 
tive comfort. 

Later, traveling in the French compartments 
was agony to me, because there is a piece of 
metal that runs down the middle of the compart- 
ments between the two rows of seats and that is 
the heating apparatus! You cannot sit on your 
foot very comfortably, because the seats are not 
wide enough, and you soon begin to feel cramped. 
The foot you are not sitting on has to rest on the 
heating apparatus. If you wear the kind of high- 
heeled, thin-soled American slippers that I have 
always worn and still wear, it becomes plain 
torture. I have talked about the method of 
heating to fellow-travelers, who sat with both 
feet firmly planted on the metal strip, and they 
generally seemed to think it satisfactory, al- 
though they said sometimes their leather soles 
were burned and then they didn't wear so long. 

On this first night trip there were three men 



20 A Year as a Government Agent 

and three women. But on my many subsequent 
journeys between Paris and Geneva and vice 
versa (I made about fifteen in all) I rarely met a 
woman. I was generally the only woman who 
sat in a crowded compartment with five men. 
Whatever the dangers are that lurk about 
women traveling alone at night, they do not exist 
in a French railroad carriage. Of course, I am a 
middle-aged woman, but I met only the greatest 
impersonal kindness and courtesy. I have been 
thrown with officers on their way back to the 
front after leave and on their way to leave. I 
have seen civilians on every sort of errand, and 
I have learned to love a Frenchman when he 
travels. 

Each of my fifteen trips had a little different 
atmosphere, but in every one there was some- 
thing of kindly human interest. There was the 
one when all the occupants were French officers 
going back to their particular sectors. One was 
an aviator. He was yoimg and handsome and 
very merry, and insisted that we could each lie 
down if some of us would crawl into the luggage 
brackets. He wanted to talk all night. There 
was also a yoimg artillery officer both of whose 
hands were bandaged. He was in plain agony 
and had little patience with the merry aviator. 
Every little while he would wake us all up and 
step over our feet to go into the passage to walk 
up and down. Then back he would come for a 
few minutes. He gnmibled quite a lot to him- 



My Appointment 21 

self. I could sympathize with him because it 
was very hot on that trip, and my frost-bitten 
foot gave me an idea of what he must have been 
suffering with his hands. 

On all the trips there was one similarity — 
there was the excessive heat and no air, and no 
Frenchman could be persuaded to let in any air. 
A draught was a thing to be forever dreaded. 
With few exceptions, all the men I met, even 
those who must have been living for years in the 
trenches, seemed to cling to their hereditary 
dread of a draught. 



CHAPTER II 1 

DIPLOMATIC, METHODS 

T ARRIVED first in Switzerland on Saturday 
^ morning, January 26, 191 8. It wasn't an 
easy thing to do. Both a French and a Swiss 
frontier had to be crossed, luggage opened, and 
passports examined at the two frontiers. No 
letters or papers could be carried. At Bellegarde, 
the French frontier, everything seemed to be 
staged to make it all as alarming as possible. 
There was a huge barrack-like room, with a low 
coimter inclosing a large space in the center. In 
this space the trunks and bags were placed. Out- 
side of the counter the travelers who wished to go 
to Switzerland formed in a line to pass through 
various barriers and by nimierous officials. Here 
they stood nervously and waited their ttim. 
Each one looked distrustfully and suspiciously at 
the others. There was no spirit of helpfulness 
among them! The passports were inspected by 
one official after another with increasing sever- 
ity. The first official, after looking over your 
passport, pointed you into a little, bare closet 
whose door was closed upon you and you did 



Diplomatic Methods 23 

not know what was going to happen. But this 
time it was only an examination of your purse, 
with many questions to find if you had any gold 
or coin with you. That was one of the forbidden 
things. The luggage came next. Bags and 
trunks were all opened. The examiners were 
mostly old women. The old woman who was 
examining mine discovered and clutched in her 
bony hand a package of letters, and away she 
went with them. There was more standing in 
line, and more examination of passports, and 
more barriers and gates to be passed, and an in- 
finite number of prying, suspicious questions 
asked and answered. What was the Committee 
on Public Information? Was I a journalist? 
Oh, perhaps I was a reporter for a fashion 
magazine? All the reasons for your traveling 
had been written on your passport by the 
American and Swiss consulates, and the French 
Prefecture, but still the questions were asked and 
asked, and in an inconceivably severe tone. Af- 
ter I had patiently and industriously answered 
them all I was led for the second time into an- 
other little, bare, wooden closet, where again the 
door was carefully closed and I was left to wonder 
what on earth was going to happen now. I be- 
gan to feel very much alone. But this time, also, 
it was nothing serious. It was only because of 
my package of letters. A door into an adjacent 
little wooden closet was opened and I was 
beckoned into an interview with a large, stout 



24 A Year as a Government Agent 

French gentleman. He was the French Military 
Intelligence Officer, whose duty kept him for 
years at this dreary post, meeting all trains, see- 
ing all suspects, forever on watch to discover his 
country's enemies, and to bear a big part of the 
responsibility of their coming and going to his 
country's harm. I have seen this officer many 
times, always courteous, always alert, and though 
I have never said more than a few words to him 
and have never heard his name, he is one of the 
men who have taught me to admire the way in 
which so many of the unspectacular, unheroic 
parts of the war have been carried out. When I 
first saw him there in the little cubbyhole he 
had my package of letters in his hand — ^letters of 
introduction to people in Switzerland — ^that was 
all. He was courteous to me and apologized for 
the over-zealousness of the inspectors, and off I 
went. 

The train arrives early in the morning at 
Bellegarde. After you have been through the 
lengthy ordeal of getting yourself and your 
luggage through the French frontier you are 
hungry and exhausted enough to sit in the little 
station restaiurant and enjoy a big cup of good, 
French coffee, and you forget to complain, even 
if there is no sugar. You hurry your coffee a 
little and rush to the train for Geneva. Between 
Bellegarde and Geneva your passport is exam- 
ined aggressively at every stop. I've wondered 
what would happen to a poor traveler with a 



Diplomatic Methods 25 

faulty passport, when those whose passports 
were quite en regie are looked upon so severely. 
Later I was told what happened to one man, 
but Tve never believed the story. It was that 
a distinguished American personage was travel- 
ing on this very line between Geneva and Belle- 
garde, and, becoming nervous, he denoimced a 
fellow-passenger to the guard, and the man was 
taken off the train and shot. I think this story 
indicates more the nervousness of the people who 
lived and traveled in Switzerland during war- 
days and their readiness to believe and repeat 
any story than that the man was really shot. 
At any rate, there was no lack of vigilance on 
the part of either French or Swiss authorities. 
Every little trifle was guarded. On one occasion 
I had bought a Swiss paper at Bellegarde to read 
on the train, but was not allowed to keep it, 
even in the train when we crossed the frontier 
into its own home, Switzerland, where it had 
been printed a few hours before. On arriving at 
Geneva there was a repetition of the examining 
of luggage and scrutinizing of passports. I won- 
der if the journey from Germany across the 
frontier into Switzerland was made as difficult. 
Late that afternoon I arrived in Berne and went 
to what I had been told was the best hotel there 
— the Bellevue-Palace. 

If Switzerland is conceded to have been an 
interesting place during the war, the Bellevue- 
Palace, from the international diplomatic point 



26 A Year as a Government Agent 

of view, was held to be the culminating spot of 
interest. There the diplomats of all the warring 
nations met. There was the big red room where 
every one went for coffee after meals and for tea 
on Sundays, and there was the long dining-room, 
where at one end sat the representatives of the 
Central Powers to eat their meager Swiss meals 
and at the other end sat the representatives of 
the Allied Powers. Or that is the way it was 
supposed to be, but sometimes the competent 
Swiss maitre d' hotel got people a little jumbled. 
There it was the fashion to talk in whispers about 
the simplest things, and look around furtively 
to see if any one was trying to listen. You would 
be told that the vaultings of the ceiling acted as 
soimding-boards and you couldn*t be too careful, 
because some one at the other end might hear 
your most quietly spoken word. On the other 
hand, it was the fashion to say in quite a loud 
tone the things you wanted the enemy to hear, 
especially when the enemy began to retreat on 
the western front. I have seen grown men from 
enemy countries stand face to face in the door, 
blocking each other's way, each with the air of 
refusing to budge. I've seen grown men wear 
tinaccustomed monocles in order to outstare 
the enemy. Fierce battles waged on neutral 
ground ! 

One sad thing there was to be seen each 
evening in that gay dining-room. It was a 
table of Austrian and German diplomats with 



Diplomatic Methods 27 

American wives — lovely yotmg women, a credit 
in their beauty to the land which gave them 
birth. I have wondered, often, how they felt 
about the war; if they suffered because of the 
necessity to side with their adopted countries 
against the ideals of democracy. There they 
were with their foreign husbands, cut off from 
all communication with home and childhood 
friends, and even from the exchange of formal 
bows with their countrypeople. It was the con- 
vention on the part of the Allies not to bow or 
speak to the citizens of enemy countries, and a 
very wise convention, too, I concluded. The 
Germans and Austrians would have spoken. 

I suspect that this dining-room of the Bellevue- 
Palace is going to figure quite extensively in war- 
time stories whose scenes may be laid in Switzer- 
land. Every journalist and writer who came 
through that coimtry seemed to feel that there 
was interest and romance there. 

But I'm forgetting my story. When I arrived 
that Saturday evening at the Bellevue-Palace I 
foimd that Mr. Hugh Wilson, the charge 
d'affaires in the absence of the minister, Mr. 
Stovall, was living there, but away over Sunday. 
I was disappointed not to see him at once. The 
next thing I did — I hate to confess to such 
frivolity — ^was to inquire very carefully of the 
hotel clerk if people dressed for dinner, and if 
the ladies wore hats or not. Of course, in Paris 
during the war you didn't dress. But at the 



28 A Year as a Government Agent 

Bellevue-Palace, I was told, you did dress and 
you had your choice as to wearing hats. 

I dressed. I don't remember about the hat. 
I went to the dining-room, and sat at a Httle 
table all by myself, and looked over the people 
I was later to know so well, either personally or 
by sight. While I waited there in Berne to over- 
come the obstacles placed in the way of beginning 
my work, I had a great deal of time on my hands, 
and I, who had been in recent years in the midst 
of a most active life, surrounded by numberless 
people — ^people I loved — found myself here alone 
in a strange country, with no friends and little 
work. Part of the discipline I imposed upon 
myself in the way of leading what I thought of 
as a ''normal life" was to go to the dining-room 
and sit alone through meals at my little table, 
instead of eating on a tray in ray room. 

The Monday morning after my arrival I saw 
Mr. Hugh Wilson. I found him a young man, 
blond and serious-looking ; a good type of Amer- 
ican in appearance. When you heard he was a 
Yale graduate of 1906 you at once said, *'A 
typical Yale man!" At this first interview I 
showed him my letter of appointment. This 
letter, you remember, announced that the State 
Department was cabling both the embassy in 
Paris and the legation in Berne, preparing them 
for my arrival. The embassy in Paris had not 
been notified, neither had the legation in Berne, 
so Mr. Hugh Wilson said. The only thing he 



Diplomatic Methods 29 

knew about me was that I had come to Switzer- 
land to study the condition of women and 
children. Of this he had been notified officially, 
he said, and had given the statement to the 
Swiss press. He regretted he could not accept 
my own assertion that I was in reality the 
official representative of the Committee on Pub- 
lic Information, nor could he consider my letter 
of appointment as authentic. He took his in- 
structions from the State Department. What 
they did not tell him he did not know. He 
acknowledged that a service of wireless or cable- 
news from America was being received by the 
legation, or had been; perhaps now it had 
stopped, he wasn't sure; but he was firm that 
even if it was still arriving, he could not turn it 
over to me to handle — to a student of women and 
children! He agreed to cable to the State De- 
partment for instructions, and he asked me to 
lunch to meet his wife. 

The average American fortunately knows little 
about practical diplomacy and the traditions in 
which our professional diplomatic secretaries are 
trained. Their training excludes a knowledge 
or practice of simplicity and directness. They 
become experts in evasions and in the use of 
what they, themselves, laugh about as "diplo- 
matic delays." They would judge it crude to 
say a "Yes" or a "No" and mean it. Months 
later, when my position was firmly established, 
one of our representatives in a moment of 



L-^ 



30 A Year as a Government Agent 

friendly confidence gave me what he considered 
good, sound advice. ''If you have anything im- 
portant to say to a man, always be sure,'* he 
said, ''to say it when you are alone with him; 
then if you want to deny it, it's only his word 
against yours." Another legation secretary, a 
young man who by family connections belongs to 
the innermost circle of our country's statesmen, 
counseled me, also after my position was estab- 
lished, to deny an agent I had sent on a danger- 
ous and difficult mission. An inquiry had come 
to the legation as to whether the agent was re- 
liable and the message authentic. He said: 
' ' Now is yoiu* chance. The message is delivered ; 
that's all you want. Answer that the message is 
authentic, but say that you know nothing of the 
agent. Then," said he, "you will not be re- 
sponsible for any unforeseen indiscretion of the 
agent." 

You can imagine the obstacles I was to face, 
battling unassisted against such methods in a 
strange country, with my official position pub- 
licly denied by the United States legation. 

The legation, with Mr. Hugh Wilson in charge, 
consisted at that time of the second secretary, 
Mr. Alan Dulles, a nephew by marriage of Mr. 
Lansing, the Secretary of State, and several 
other young secretaries. There were also the 
military attache with two or three assistants, and 
Mr. Ellis Dresel, an elderly gentleman, a mem- 
ber of clubs, and a non-practising lawyer of 



Diplomatic Methods 3 i 

Boston, who was representing both the Red 
Cross and the War Trade Board. The young 
secretaries of the legation were all clever. They 
questioned and cross-examined me at every turn. 
They must know what I was doing. And I was 
at once surrounded by such vague misrepresen- 
tation and obstructions that I felt always as if I 
were moving in a thick fog. I remember many 
little incidents that wasted time and effort, but 
stirred my determination to clear the fog. For 
instance, in the first days, I wanted to meet a 
man in Geneva on committee business, and 
when I asked one of the secretaries for his ad- 
dress I was told : ''Don't bother. We are in con- 
stant communication with him and we will 
make the appointment for him to meet you at 
the hour and place in Geneva you say." I ap- 
pointed two o'clock at the H6tel National the 
following Saturday. The arrangement was con- 
firmed to me by letter. On arriving at the Hotel 
National I waited and waited. The man did 
not come. I had then to find his address and 
run him to earth. It meant a delay of several 
days. Later, in comparing notes with him, I 
foimd that a message had been sent to him from 
the legation, not to his address, but in so cir- 
cmtous a way that it did not reach him imtil 
long afterward. Another time, when I stood 
in the hall of the Bellevue-Palace with a tele- 
gram in my hand, one of the secretaries came 
and questioned me. I said I was arranging a 



32 A Year as a Government Agent 

meeting with a certain prominent Swiss whom it 
was important for me to see at once. Until I 
had seen him, instructions I had received from 
Washington could not be carried out. The secre- 
tary told me in great detail that it was useless 
for me to try to reach him ! He had been called 
the previous day on his military service and 
would not return home for three months, and | 
no one knew where a man was when he was on 
military service in Switzerland. It happened 
that the telegram I had in my hand at the 
moment when these details were given to me was 
one I was sending, not to try to find the man 
I wanted to see, but one in answer to a note I 
had received from him that very day. Of course 
I became suspicious. This was the first incident 
of deception I could definitely lay my finger on, 
but I wanted to be sure. Was my diplomatic in- 
formant honestly mistaken or was he trying to 
deceive me? I questioned him carefully. "Just 
how do you know?" I asked. The diplomat 
himself had wanted to see him. ''But when did 
you try? Perhaps he was away, but has re- 
turned?" No, no, it was only the previous day 
that the diplomat had tried. He was sure, he 
said, of what he told me. I said nothing of my 
own information, but I spent the following Sim- 
day with the man in question at his country 
home. His military service for the year had been 
completed some time before. 

One little incident of this sort followed an- 



Diplomatic Methods 33 

other. I grew to fear that something would go 
askew with my most carefully made appoint- 
ment. It was a clever campaign of obstruction — 
very wasteful of my time and energy and calcu- 
lated to be discouraging to any one who had not 
been trained in suffrage campaigns. In the good, 
honest air of America, looking back at it all, it 
seems incredible. 

But from the diplomatic point of view it was 
necessary not only to obstruct my activities 
whenever possible, but to discourage me from 
continuing them. Had not Mr. Hugh Wilson, 
the charge d'affaires, gone on record as to the 
great importance of ''Whitehouse's not coming, 
since his name had been mentioned" in the 
Swiss press? That applied also in their minds 
to Mrs. Whitehouse even as student of the con- 
ditions of women and children. Since I had 
come in spite of their judgment, I should be 
made to leave as soon as possible and be ren- 
dered innocuous while I stayed. 

There was one story our diplomats told with 
great glee, which inadvertently came to my 
ears, of a man who had been sent to help estab- 
lish, I think it was, a depot of Red Cross ma- 
terial. When the man arrived he was looked 
upon with suspicion by the gentlemen already in 
charge, and for two months was kept on moun- 
tain-climbing expeditions out of the way ! 

Suggestions were made to me that I should go 

to Saint Moritz and wait for the long-delayed in- 
3 



34 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

structions from the State Department. I was 
told of the skating, dancing, and gaiety there, 
and even of a charming officer, who would make 
it his business to see I had a pleasant time. 
Perhaps I don't look as old and sedate as I am. 
Obstructions did not discourage me; social 
gaiety did not tempt me. Could I be frightened 
away? I was told every thrilling story of spies 
that was known in Switzerland, of the dark 
dangers that always surrounded one, of the im- 
possibility of guarding one's effects from prying, 
of how one man had found a spy in his wardrobe 
and another under his bed, of how the hotel em- 
ployees, especially, could not be trusted. I was 
told of assaults. Every one had heard of the 
American legation employee who was attacked 
one night, when he was carrying some very secret 
and valuable papers. There were even stories of 
bombs. These spies would stop at nothing. 
They were absolutely unscrupulous. In trains, 
too, there were spies who would steal your secrets 
from under your very eyes ; nothing could escape 
them. They seemed superhuman in their re- 
sourcefulness and courage — a race of Sherlock 
Holmeses. Of course, there really were spies in 
Switzerland, and I learned later there was a 
complication of them. First, and infinitely the 
most nimierous, were the German spies, whose 
business it was to know and report what every 
one was doing, the more important of whom 
went from Switzerland into the Allied countries 



Diplomatic Methods 35 

and discovered military secrets and hatched de- 
featist plots among the soldiers and working- 
people. Of course, there were Swiss spies, too, 
to watch for other spies and protect Swiss neu- 
trality laws. There were, also, undoubtedly, 
Allied spies, who were trying to guard us from 
the machinations of the German agents. That 
part of the system I did not consciously grasp at 
first, because the talk I heard was all of German 
spies. When I was told that the concierge of 
the Bemerhof Hotel, where I lived later, had 
been arrested as a spy I felt an unreasonable 
sense of irritation and enmity against this hotel. 
I gasped with surprise when I finally found he 
had been arrested as a French spy! 

I was told that the German and Swiss spies 
would watch everything you did. You couldn't 
escape them. When they ''had" you, you would 
be arrested. The arrest was certain, but the 
reasons were never clear to my mind. It was 
explained to me that any government work 
imdertaken apart from the legation was against 
Swiss neutrality laws, and the penalty might be 
anything — it seemed not even short of execution. 
After a little time I was told that information 
had been received that I, myself, was being 
watched — ^followed constantly. In fact, I had 
noticed it myself, but I did not acknowledge 
it. I answered that I was not surprised; the 
attitude of the American legation toward me 
couldn't fail to invite it. The situation was 



36 A Year as a Government Agent 

very dangerous for me, they said. But I re- 
mained calm. 

Of course, I was interested in the stories of 
spies. I don't know why they should have a 
fascination for the most practical of people. I 
kept my eyes open for them. I even hid inno- 
cent papers in the most tempting places, but I 
must confess that never in the many months 
that I have lived in Switzerland did I ever find 
any trace of a spy in my hotel rooms. Elsewhere 
it was a different story, as I'll tell you later. 

After a little time it seemed borne into the 
minds of the legation patriots that the student 
of the condition of women and children was go- 
ing to stay and make every effort to undertake 
the work which she had been sent to do. Then 
came a campaign to persuade me that it should 
be done secretly. Every one told me there was 
no way of doing such work openly. There was 
much talk of the ''delicate condition of Switzer- 
land." Switzerland wasn't strong enough, it 
seemed, to stand a little authentic news of what 
was happening in a sister republic, under new 
and world-affecting circumstances. 

All the Allied agents, moved apparently by a 
common impulse, began to advise me. I was 
asked to meet the members of one Allied mission 
at tea and solemnly warned, but not persuaded, 
of the dangers and impossibility of the methods 
I had proposed. Again an interview was ar- 
ranged for me with a representative of another 



Diplomatic Methods 37 

Allied nation, who was looking after his country's 
interests in the approved subterranean fashion. 
One of our legation secretaries had whispered to 
me that this was to be a secret conference of great 
importance. It was rather suggested that I, 
being a woman, might well feel a thrill at being 
let into such matters. The secretary of the 
legation met me at a favorable hour, when very 
few people were about, and took me to the Allied 
representative's room. I had been asked if I 
would mind going to his room, and I had care- 
lessly answered, ''No." It happened to be his 
bedroom. The legation secretary, to my sur- 
prise, prepared to leave us to our secret confer- 
ence. By this time I had been made suspicious 
of the simplest things. I thought I might as 
well guard against future attacks upon my repu- 
tation. I said I was embarrassed at sitting in a 
strange gentleman's bedroom, and proposed that 
we should have our talk in one of the great hotel 
drawing-rooms. Oh no! That wouldn't do. 
We might be seen — we might be overheard. So, 
although it was a bitter cold, dark night, we 
arranged to meet with the greatest secrecy on a 
bench under a tree in a near-by little park — a 
kind of platform that juts out high over the Aar 
Valley and faces the Bernese Alps. The snow 
lay on the ground and the bench was in an ex- 
posed position. When we met I was well wrapped 
up in a great fur coat, but I had forgotten 
to cover my satin slippers, and the wind howled 



38 A Year as a Government Agent 

around my ankles. The Allied conspirator's 
teeth chattered. But there we sat and I heard 
again of the "delicate condition of Switzerland." 
I heard again of the network of spies ; I heard 
once more that even with superhimian foresight 
and care, nothing, nothing could be kept secret. 
Everything in Switzerland was sooner or later 
discovered and known to every one else. And 
again I heard that it was of imperative impor- 
tance to do things secretly. In fact, there was 
no other way. One would not be allowed to do 
them openly. And if one tried it and even suc- 
ceeded, as far as the openness was concerned, it 
could only be a lamentable failure in results. 

Once more, with my undiplomatic common 
sense, I came away wondering what on earth 
was the use of being secret when everybody 
knew everything anyway. But this gentleman 
was kindly and I believe he wanted to be help- 
ful. He told me his own careful methods — 
methods of which I disapproved and which I 
would not use. 

But to go back to my arrival in Berne, I 
seemed to be checkmated for the minute by Mr. 
Hugh Wilson's refusal to turn over to me the 
news service, the editing, translating, and dis- 
tributing of which were to form one of my chief 
activities. At first I believed it wotild be a 
matter of only a few days before he received the 
instructions as to my status, which he said he 
was seeking from the State Department, and I 



Diplomatic Methods 39 

could begin my work openly. It did not seem 
unreasonable to wait a little and look over the 
situation. I spent two days in Berne making 
more or less futile efforts to disentangle a few 
simple facts from the confusion of many con- 
flicting diplomatic statements, and then I paid 
my first visit to Zurich. As on all my later trips 
there that winter, in order not to waste time, I 
got up in the dark, walked to the station, had a 
cup of coffee there, and took a 5 a.m. train. 

The walk from the Bellevue- Palace Hotel to the 
station takes you, first, through a narrow street 
for a block, then diagonally across a large square 
— the public market-place — ^to another narrow 
street arcaded this time. Why, I wonder, were 
properly brought up girl children taught, thirty 
years or more ago, that they should not go alone 
on the streets, especially in the dark? The result 
of that teaching has lingered with me yet. This 
first time that I took the early-morning train to 
Zurich I walked down the staircase of the 
hotel and across the big, deserted, dimly 
lighted hall as if I were a thief, and, before turn- 
ing the swinging door into the street, I stopped 
a minute and shivered as I looked out into the 
dark morning. It was a very cold winter. I 
hurried, as I turned to the left, down the narrow 
street. I wrapped my cloak closer about me and 
pulled my hat down over my face and grasped 
my letter-case tighter as I came into the open 
square. What did I see there in the space so 



40 A Year as a Government Agent \ 

dimly lighted by the distant electric lamps? The 
strangest crew met my astonished eyes. Was 
Switzerland the home of witches, as Holland is 
of storks? There they were in a row — six, seven 
of them, with their queer-looking brooms, ad- 
vancing in a line, step by step, ready to moimt 
and fly away. I wanted to run. Had my mind 
given way a little? I wondered. I went on, 
making a wide circuit, my heart thtmiping. No, 
they weren't witches — they didn't fly away — 
they were merely old, bent women, methodically 
sweeping the streets of Berne in the dark of a 
cold winter morning, before the happier inhabi- 
tants were awake. There they were, sisters of the 
hard-worked army of scrub-women who invade 
our own palatial office-buildings each night to 
scrub and work, while the daytime occupants 
eat and sleep. These are women whom the 
chivalry of men has failed to protect from heavy 
burdens. The old street-cleaning women of I 

Berne gave me so bad a fright that first morning 
that, although on subsequent meetings we man- 
aged to exchange a ' G'n Morgen^' I always 
shivered when I passed them. 

The train to Zurich was slow and lumbered 
along, arriving there about ten. Trains in 
Switzerland, unlike those in France, were insuf- 
ficiently or not at all heated. Switzerland was de- 
pendent upon Germany for coal, and its supply 
was scanty and dear. Traveling was not a Itixury . 

My first visit to Zurich was an encouraging 



Diplomatic Methods 41 

one. I met and Ivinched with some of the 
French representatives, who seemed eager for 
my co-operation. I had heard that Mr. Harold 
McCormick was Hving there, and I went to see 
him, unintroduced. I knew he was well thought 
of and might be willing to help me. I explained 
my mission to him, and showed him my letter of 
appointment. I remember he asked me what 
were my relations with the legation. I told 
him their position. His simplicity and honesty 
impressed me. He took me to see Doctor Fuet- 
ter, the editor of foreign affairs of the Neue 
Zurcher Zeitung, one of the largest of the German- 
Swiss papers, and left me to discuss with him the 
feasibility of establishing an office in Switzerland 
to give authentic news of America. Doctor 
Fuetter agreed that it would be of value. I 
went, unintroduced, to editors of other papers 
and presented the same proposition to them, 
and foimd them also interested. 

I returned that evening to Berne and waited 
there a few days more for Mr. Hugh Wilson to 
receive his instructions as to my true status. 
They did not come as promptly as I had ex- 
pected, so I went to Geneva for a short visit. 
There I was welcomed as a friend by Prof, 
and Madame William E. Rappard, to whom I 
had brought a letter of introduction from Mr. 
Creel. They live in a lovely house on the hills 
overlooking the Lake of Geneva and facing the 
great chain of mountains where Mont Blanc 



42 A Year as a Government Agent 

reigns supreme. They took me into their house- 
hold and made me feel at home. Later I stayed 
with them often and I don't know which is a 
pleasanter spot to recall, the terrace with the 
view of the moimtains and the friendly ap- 
proaches of their sturdy, small children, or Pro- 
fessor Rappard's library at the top of the house, 
where we often sat by the fire far into the night, 
I fascinated by his tsalk of world affairs. Pro- 
fessor Rappard is a young man — ^years yoimger 
than I — ^but the impression he gives is one of 
maturity and authority. Already he is recog- 
nized in his own country as a man of national 
influence and importance. He had been chosen 
as the head of a Swiss Mission to America in 
191 7, to arrange the terms on which Switzerland 
should receive grain from the United States. 
While here he won the regard of President Wil- 
son, who saw him on several occasions. In 
Switzerland he was one of the few stanch and 
determined friends in public life which America 
had at that time. On his return from his mis- 
sion he made a tour of Switzerland, lecturing 
upon conditions as he had found them here, and 
his lectures were the first attempt, that I know 
of, to present to the Swiss our side of why we 
went into the war. 

My first week in Switzerland, with my trips 
to Zurich and Geneva and my patient efforts to 
meet^and talk to people in Berne, confirmed cer- 
tain general impressions I had brought with me. 



Diplomatic Methods 43 

It was undeniable that the entrance of America 
into the World War was a matter of vital inter- 
est to European coimtries. Yet neutral coun- 
tries did not clearly understand our motives. 
They were asking what our coming into the war 
really meant and what its bearing would be on 
the outcome of the war. There was no one to 
answer their questions in our behalf. We had 
no established official or semi-official news 
agency to disseminate our news as Havas does 
for the French, Renter for the English, Wolff for 
the German, etc. At that time our Associated 
Press and other agencies only gathered European 
news for American papers; they did not give 
American news to foreign papers. The questions 
being asked abroad as to America's aims and 
acts were left to be answered promptly, em- 
phatically, and wrongly by the German news 
agencies and propaganda offices. The people of 
Switzerland, as well as the people of the Central 
Empires, were told that the United States had 
gone into the war to secure its loans to the 
Allies, to wrest from England its supremacy of 
the seas, to gain every kind of imaginary ma- 
terial benefit. At the same time it was ex- 
plained that we had no army; if we ever organ- 
ized one, we could not transport it across the 
ocean. If we ever could transport it, we could 
not arm it, and even if armed our soldiers would 
be so badly trained they could not face the un- 
conquerable heroes of Germany. All this mis- 



44 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

information and much more appeared in the 
coliimns of the daily papers and was circulated 
by means of pamphlets. A most extraordinary 
campaign of pamphleteering was at its height in 
Switzerland at that time. It had become a com- 
monly repeated joke that a man's mail-box would 
be so crowded each morning with German 
pamphlets that all other business was driven to 
the wall. The Allies, too, entered into the game. 
The most. rigid rule observed by both sides was 
that the pamphlets should be prepared with the 
greatest secrecy and delivered with no indication 
of their source. The only relaxation of this rule 
was when, on rare occasions, a Swiss could be 
persuaded to lend his name as translator to some 
speech or public document. 

One evening, during my first visit to Professor 
Rappard's, the mail brought a pamphlet con- 
taining a translation of one of President Wilson's 
speeches. There was no indication of who had 
printed it or who was responsible for sending it. 
Professor Rappard looked at it and said, ''Oh, 
anonymous — ^more propaganda ! ' ' That little in- 
cident convinced me more than ever of the folly 
of all the mystery and secrecy. President Wil- 
son's speeches, which were not at that time pub- 
lished in full in the Swiss papers, were of interest 
to all the world. One of our Allies realized it to 
the extent of printing and circulating them se- 
cretly. I wanted to find out who had done it, 
but, so carefully were all traces hidden, that it 



Diplomatic Methods 45 

took some weeks and many efforts before I suc- 
ceeded. Then when I said that the pamphlets 
would have carried greater weight if their au- 
thenticity had been vouched for by some recog- 
nized representative, I was again told how 
impossible it would be to do it in any but a secret 
manner. 

In spite of the general feeling, I became con- 
vinced that my plan of open work would be suc- 
cessful if I could put it into operation. 



CHAPTER III 

THE VANISHING NEWS SERVICE 

AA Y first step, of course, was to get hold of the 
^ ^ ^ wireless news service, but it was not to be an 
easy thing to do. I did not even know if it was 
now being sent to Switzerland. Mr. Hugh Wil- 
son, you remember, had acknowledged at our 
first interview, when he refused to turn the 
service over to me, that the legation was receiv- 
ing it. But he soon became uncertain whether 
it was still coming. Then after a day or two he 
decided that it was no longer coming. The 
reason that it had been stopped, he said, was 
probably because he had reported that the de- 
lays in transmission rendered it useless. He, 
trained in secrecy, imtrained in publicity, thought 
little of it anyway. That service was like the 
vanishing Cheshire cat ! Of course, if there were 
delays in its transmission, or if it was not being 
sent to Switzerland any longer, I should know 
why. So while I was still waiting for^^Mr. Hugh 
Wilson to find out about my status and receive 
instructions to let me handle the news service, I 
determined to go back to Paris and try to dis- 



The Vanishing News Service 47 

cover what the real facts were. On a two days' 
visit there I found that Mr. Hugh Wilson had 
been quite mistaken and that the wireless news 
service had not been stopped, but was being 
promptly forwarded from the Paris embassy to 
the Berne legation each day. The delays which, 
according to him, rendered it useless I found were 
not in Paris. Covdd it be that the Swiss censor- 
ship authorities were responsible for them? Or 
perhaps Mr. Hugh Wilson was again mistaken 
and there were no delays? 

I also heard from the Committee on Public 
Information^ that, in spite of the women and 
children story, there had been no change in my 
instructions, and that I was to institute my work 
as agreed upon. 

This visit to Paris was pleasanter for me than 
the first, because I met some American friends. 
Captain David Gray, instead of the concierge, 
went with me to the station this time. The train 
for Switzerland left the Gare de Lyon in the 
evening at 8.25. The Gare de Lyon is a long 
way from the hotel near the ' Place Vend6me, 
where I stayed. I had discussed with the hotel 
concierge the problem of how to get myself and 
my bags there. He had said he would have a 
taxicab for me at 7.45. By beginning to look 
for it early enough, he was sure he could find one. 
Quarter to eight came, and still he stood in the 
middle of the darkened Place Vend6me,_or 

1 Appendices V and VI. 



48 A Year as a Government Agent 

walked down the gloom of the deserted Rue Cas- 
tiglione toward the Rue de Rivoli ; no taxi came. 
The Paris chauffeurs may have been eating, 
sleeping, amusing themselves, but they were not 
looking for fares in the neighborhood of the Place 
Venddme on the evening of February 5, 191 8. 
Time pressed. Captain Gray and I decided we 
could wait no longer. We took up my bags and 
ran for the Metro. — ^the Paris subway. It was 
very cold and underfoot it was icy and sloppy. 
I was wearing my little high-heel American 
slippers, and it was here that my foot was frost- 
bitten. I had not considered the chances of a 
frost-bite, and besides I had expected to go in a 
taxi. I did not know it was frost-bitten imtil I 
was in the train and it rested upon the heating 
apparatus. 

On my return to Berne, as I had not yet be- 
come familiar with the full meaning of ''diplo- 
matic delays," nor with the determination of 
diplomatic representatives, I expected without 
fail to find Mr. Hugh Wilson instructed as to my 
true status and ready to drop the women and 
children story and to turn the news service over 
to me. Had not two weeks elapsed since he first 
cabled for information and had I not cabled my 
protest against working imder false pretenses? 
And here I had come back from Paris with fuller 
information about the news service and with 
directions to institute my work as agreed upon. 
As yet no doubt of the good faith of any govern- 



The Vanishing News Service 49 

merit department had occurred to me. But I 
found that Mr. Hugh Wilson had not been in- 
structed and I could not begin my work. I 
now started what was to develop into a lengthy 
and confusing interchange of cables with the 
Committee on Public Information in Washington. 

The cables I sent there had to be put into code 
by the legation in Berne, forwarded by them to 
the State Department in Washington, and there 
decoded and paraphrased and delivered. No 
true copy of a coded cable was allowed out of the 
hands of the State Department or legation. It 
might have meant, they said, the deciphering of 
a very secret code. Even with the best inten- 
tions delays and mistakes are easy to understand 
under this system. It has taken as long as 
twelve days for a cable to reach me from Mr. 
Creel's department. This meant that our cables 
at times crossed each other and resulted in end- 
less confusion. In addition some of the cables 
were so "mutilated" in decoding that their 
meaning had to be guessed at. Words never 
dreamed of by the sender were supplied perhaps 
by a weary and imaginative clerk. For instance, 
one cable I received in Paris solemnly assured 
me that my husband could get along. It was 
not until a year later that this enigmatic message 
was explained, when I went through the records 
in Washington and found that there was no 
mention of my husband — ^the phrase should 
have read tamely, *'If at all possible." 

4 



50 A Year as a Government Agent 

The open cable, because of foreign censorship, 
was even more uncertain, and I had been in- 
structed not to use it. 

But time passed and answers, more or less in- 
telligible, did begin to come to Berne from 
Washington. In response to two cables from 
me asking that Mr. Hugh Wilson should be in- 
structed as to which one of us was to handle the 
news service, Mr. Creel cabled ^ that I, not Mr. 
Hugh Wilson, was to handle it. I had known it, 
of course, but Mr. Hugh Wilson had not. Al- 
though he still maintained that he had not 
heard from the State Department, he became 
now, for the first time, officially aware of Mr. 
Creel's existence, and in transmitting this mes- 
sage to me he wrote ^ that, in view of Mr. 
Creel's instructions to me, he was now ready to 
turn over the news service in case it was still 
coming to the legation. Again it threatened, 
like the Cheshire cat, to vanish! If it reap- 
peared, he agreed to let me know. 

Before I could take charge of the news service, 
Mr. Hugh Wilson not only had to find it, but I 
had to take an office and engage translators. I 
was living in one small hotel bedroom, already 
a confusion of tnmks, papers, books, and clothes. 
I wanted, also, at once to find the cause of the 
reported delays and uncertainty in the receipt of 
the news service. My undiplomatic mind sug- 
gested to me that, since the delays were not in 

^ Appendix VII. 2 Appendix VIII. 



The Vanishing News Service 51 

Paris, the next step to take was to go to the 
Swiss official who was in control of the censor- 
ship. 

Professor Rappard had kindly given me letters 
of introduction to the President of the Swiss 
Confederation and other officials, but requested 
that, before the letters were presented, Mr. Hugh 
Wilson's explanation of my presence in Switzer- 
land should agree with his and my own — that I 
was there as the representative of the Committee 
on Public Information. It seemed to me the 
time had come to present these letters. This 
brought about an interview between Mr. Hugh 
Wilson and me. He, too, saw the necessity of 
our statements agreeing before the letters were 
presented. He suggested that we send a com- 
bined cable to Washington, each setting forth 
his own view of the situation, and appealing to 
our respective departments in Washington to 
reach a conclusion there. I agreed to the sug- 
gestion and promised to wait a reasonable time 
for an answer before taking any further steps. 
This was February 8th. In his cable ^ Mr. Hugh 
Wilson was very firm that if I "were a recognized 
emissary of the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion, I would be precluded from reaching re- 
lations with the editors of newspapers that would 
be of benefit to our cause." To his mind, if I 
openly offered American news, Swiss editors 
would suspect the news and distrust me, but the 

^ Appendix IX. 



52 A Year as a Government Agent 

miracle of the ^^ cloak'' (women and children) 
would change all that. At any rate, he ex- 
plained in his cable that I wanted to have the 
legation acknowledge my official position (not 
publicly), but in answer to official or business 
inquiries. To do even this, he pointed out, 
would place the legation in the position of 
acknowledging the falsity of the communique 
sent out over his signature, and the pres- 
tige of the legation would be injured there- 
by! In my cable^ I said I found a demand 
for American news and was convinced that 
I could work openly with success, and pro- 
tested that the method of working imder the 
''cloak'' of women and children, as advocated 
by Mr. Hugh Wilson and rejected by me, re- 
sembled the German method of secret propa- 
ganda, which we despised as dishonest. 

This combined communication, as well as sub- 
sequent cables which I sent, brought many 
replies to me, but never did any answer, that I 
know of, reach Mr. Hugh Wilson from the State 
Department. Among other things, I was told 
by Mr. Creel in Washington: ''Until arrival of 
Paris representative, suggest quiet stuvey of 
field without publicity." I had never wanted 
publicity except for American news. "Think it 
wise to wait before establishing office and pre- 
senting letters." I had already waited; I was 
still > waiting. "Urge absolute harmony with 

\Appendix X, 



The Vanishing News Service 53 

legation." Yes, that was what I wanted, too, 
but how could it be? " Continue survey and un- 
official contact." What did this mean for an 
official representative? I was told, too, that 
"Swiss situation is of extreme delicacy," and I 
was instructed to "avoid attacks on Germany." 
I had weeks before cabled to Mr. Creel about the 
severity of the Swiss neutrality laws. I had fol- 
lowed with breathless attention the trial of a 
Swiss art-dealer who had dared display some 
Raemakers drawings. I was contemplating no 
attacks on Germans or Germany! And again, 
February iQth,^ I was told, "Let your situation 
wait until arrival in Paris of Kemey [director for 
France of the Committee on Public Information], 
when clear-cut decision will be made. Original 
instructions unaltered and President personally 
instructed State Department of his approval of 
our plans." When Mr. Hugh Wilson gave me 
this cable he drew my attention to the fact that 
my situation was "to wait," and he said he did 
not believe the statement about the President's 
approval. On my part, I wondered how, if I 
were to wait and wait, was I to follow the original 
instructions, which were unaltered, and begin at 
once to handle the news service? To this confus- 
ing mass of directions I answered, February 19th '} 
"Must have office to handle wireless service. 
Assimie responsibility of taking one." Then fol- 
lowed repeated instructions from Washington to 

* Appendix XI. ^ Appendix XII. 



54 A Year as a Government Agent 

establish one ^* without formal announcement.'* ^ 
But it proved to be one of the things easier said 
than done. 

From the first I had been looking for an office 
steadily and persistently, and now I continued 
with increased energy. Under the most favor- 
able circumstances, it would have been a diffi- 
cult job. Berne was then as crowded as Wash- 
ington was during the war. It is a quaint little 
city with more than enough hotel accommoda- 
tions to house its normal tourist travel and its 
usual number of official and diplomatic repre- 
sentatives. At the outbreak of the war the 
number of representatives of each belligerent 
nation increased enormously. I, personally, 
never knew anything about the size of the Ger- 
man legation with its associated offices, but it 
was common gossip that there were seven hun- 
dred, eight himdred, twelve hundred persons at- 
tached to it, the ntimber growing as the war 
continued. These numbers, while they were 
probably exaggerated, certainly indicated a con- 
stant increase of activity. At least I know how 
it was with our own government representatives 
and employees in Berne. They increased fifty- 
fold during eighteen months. Practically all of 
these additional people were quartered in that 
little city. The question of finding an office be- 
came, therefore, a real problem. But I suc- 
ceeded in discovering several places which were 

1 Appendices XIII and XIV. 




THE QUAINT KESSLERGASSE IN BERNE, SWITZERLAND, WITH THE SPIRE 
OF THE CATHEDRAL TO THE RIGHT 



The Vanishing News Service 55 

more or less possible, and three times I was on 
the point of closing a contract when my prospec- 
tive landlord would demand a reference as to the 
legitimacy of the work I was to undertake, and 
I had no reference to give except the American 
legation. You can easily see that it was im- 
possible for me to obtain an office. I then em- 
ployed a Swiss lawyer, whose investigations con- 
firmed my own opinions, that tmtil there was a 
change of attitude on the part of the legation 
toward me I could not hope to find quarters. 
This man gave his time generously to my affairs 
and refused to the end to send a bill or receive 
payment. 

During this period the American Red Cross 
had two vacant rooms in their office, at which I 
looked with longing eyes. I asked Mr. Dresel, 
who was then directing Red Cross activities in 
Switzerland, for the use of these rooms so long 
only as he did not need them. He evaded a 
reply. Then refused. Later, when a message 
came that the President authorized my work and 
thought I should begin, I again asked Mr. Dresel 
for the temporary use of those still vacant rooms. 
How I wanted them! But again he refused. 
Of course, he expected to need them himself 
shortly, he said. 

It naturally took courage in a little place like 
Berne, where the atmosphere was so strained, 
for any one to help a person whose activities were 
frowned upon by the diplomatic representatives 



56 A Year as a Government Agent 

of his country. Nevertheless, I had made some 
friends who were wilHng to help — ^but they were 
not among our countr3rmen. 

Finally, an Italian journalist, who had a one- 
room office already overcrowded, offered me not 
only desk room there, but the services of one or 
more of his translators. But, in the mean time, 
other things had happened which made it neces- 
sary for "my situation to wait" and to wait. 

I could guess at the complications in Wash- 
ington, which were operating to make Mr. 
Creel's instructions to me so unsatisfactory. It 
seemed clear at the time and is even clearer now 
in looking back at it, a year and a half later, that 
the situation was somewhat as follows: Under 
President Wilson's direction, or at least with his 
approval, the Committee on Public Information 
had embarked upon its plan of establishing rep- 
resentatives in Allied and neutral countries to 
disseminate American news. I believe, from indi- 
cations which cropped up here and there, that 
this plan from the first was distrusted and op- 
posed by the State Department as an encroach- 
ment upon its own exclusive control of foreign 
relations and activities. The State Department 
must have feared conscientiously that delicate 
foreign situations would be imperilled by the 
activities of representatives not imder its con- 
trol and untrained in diplomatic traditions. The 
diplomats in Berne talked much of the ignorance 
of those outside their own circle. An unknown 



The Vanishing News Service 57 

detail of history or of court gossip would render 
a man, to their minds, unfit to transact any gov- 
ernment business in a foreign land. No amount 
of intelligence or familiarity and experience with 
his own country's problems and point of view 
could compensate. Even the ambassadors and 
ministers not diplomats by career did not escape 
their scorn. 

As to my own appointment, in addition to the 
general opposition, I was a woman! And Mr. 
Lansing, Secretary of State and the huwsband of a 
very active anti-suffragist, cannot be called a 
liberal man in his attitude toward women. The 
newspaper report of his opposition to my ap- 
pointment, although it was promptly denied by 
him, was followed by nmiors and gossip to the 
same effect which reached me through friends 
in Washington, even before I had left Amer- 
ica. Such rtimors continued to come to my 
husband's ears after I had engaged in the 
struggle in Berne. Also the failure of my 
diplomatic passport to arrive (diplomatic pass- 
ports are issued only by the State Department), 
and the failure of the State Department to notify 
the Paris embassy and the Berne legation of 
my appointment as expected by Mr. Creel, the 
ridiculous story of the women and children, to 
which such prompt publicity was given in Swit- 
zerland, all seemed to indicate opposition to me, 
as well as to'show a lack of co-operation between 
the two departments. The significance of these 



58 A Year as a Government Agent 

incidents was enforced by the continued failure 
on the part of the State Department to instruct 
Mr. Hugh Wilson as to my true status in such a 
manner that he could become aware of it. As 
weeks passed, it became apparent that if Mr. Hugh 
Wilson really had cabled, as he agreed to do on 
my arrival in Berne, asking authentic informa- 
tion concerning me, he either spoke truly when he 
said he received no answer or he must have been 
confidentially directed to ignore my appoint- 
ment and to obstruct my work. To a shrewd 
diplomat the very failure to receive an answer to 
such an inquiry wotild be tantamount to explicit 
instructions. To us here in America, it would 
seem very possible to overlook such matters as 
being unimportant, but during my experiences in 
Switzerland I was constantly surprised by the 
trifling personal questions to which in the midst 
of world events diplomats and officials could find 
time to turn their attention. 

To support their conscientious objections not 
only to my plans for open work, but to all 
foreign activities of the Committee on Public In- 
formation, the diplomats were imdoubtedly 
ready to avail themselves of all their weapons, 
and chief among them was ''diplomatic delays." 
When, on February 8th, I accepted Mr. Hugh 
Wilson's suggestion that we send the combined 
cable asking our departments in Washington to 
agree there on instructions, more opportimities 
were given for delays and obstructions. To 



The Vanishing News Service 59 

these cables, as well as to his inquiry about my 
status, Mr. Hugh Wilson still protested that he 
received no answer whatever from the State 
Department, while the confused answers which 
came to me from Mr. Creel not only prevented 
me from going ahead, but gave further indica- 
tions that a struggle was taking place in Wash- 
ington as well as in Berne. Away from America, 
I did not know then of the relentless and virulent 
attacks which were being made upon Mr. Creel 
— attacks which were to continue with unabated it^ 
violence throughout the period of his government 
service. When the war is well over and we are 
calm again we'll look back with amazement 
upon these public storms which raged about an 
energetic and patriotic official. A foolish, tact- 
less remark he made about Congress in a small 
meeting in New York provoked a Congressional 
investigation in Washington. It was time stolen 
from the great and serious work of winning the 
war. In view of it all, it is not surprising that 
Mr. Creel, with his plans for foreign work op- 
posed by the State Department, with his atten- 
tion diverted by newspaper criticisms and cruel 
cartoons, with his time consumed by party at- 
tacks and Congressional investigations, with 
every minute overcrowded ' with the multitudi- 
nous demands of his fast-growing work, all 
hurrying him and buffeting him along — it is not 
surprising that he had to let something wait. It 
was my situation which was to wait — it was to 



6o A Year as a Government Agent 

wait until perhaps there was a lull in the storm, 
when he could have another interview with the 
President, when a further decision could be made 
as to the case of Mrs. Whitehouse who was 
fretting so insistently in Switzerland under the 
blocking tactics of the legation or of the State 
Department. 

But waiting in comparative idleness in Berne 
was the hardest sentence that could have been 
passed upon me. I had left my coimtry, my 
family, my activities and interests, so absorb- 
ing to me, and all of my home comforts to 
work for my country in a strange land. I 
saw work crying to be done, and because it 
was not done I believed our country's inter- 
ests and, in fact, the whole Allied cause were 
suffering. If I had found a way of over- 
coming the obstacles placed in my path, I might 
have proved insubordinate and gone to work in 
spite of the instructions to wait. 

During this time of waiting I managed to live 
through the mornings in Berne pretty cheer- 
fully. I read the Swiss and German papers 
assiduously and made mental notes as to the 
various journalistic styles, and planned my 
future work. Every day I hunted for an office. 
I would go to see and consimie the time of a 
group of busy men whom I had met and liked — 
not American diplomats. It was the afternoons 
which were trying. I recall with strange vivid- 
ness that I went day after day to my small north 



The Vanishing News Service 6i 

bedroom after a solitary luncheon at my little 
table, and would rebel against my inactivity and 
think that the best thing in the world was a 
hard day's work. How I longed even for over- 
work with all its drawbacks. The hours of en- 
forced idleness were so irksome that they must 
have seemed longer and more frequent than they 
were in reality, for, although it took two more 
trips to Paris and one to America before I was 
able finally to begin my work, I accimiulated 
throughout the winter months of waiting a store 
of information that was to be of value and save 
time later. Under the conditions, the informa- 
tion was acquired with the maximtmi of effort 
and expenditure of time. In my morning read- 
ing I had become familiar with the Swiss and 
the German press. I found that, although of- 
ficial military communiques and accounts of po- 
litical events from all the warring countries were 
published in the daily papers, the Swiss press 
was under the severest governmental control. 
There was a double censorship of the foreign 
news : first on the part of the military authorities 
of the coimtries from which the news came, and 
second on the part of the Swiss authorities to 
guard against infractions of its neutrality laws. 
There was, too, a shortage of print-paper that 
reduced the greatest of Swiss newspapers to four 
tiny sheets. The double censorship and the 
shortage of paper rendered the news which did 
appear the merest outline of political and mili- 



62 A Year as a Government Agent 

tary facts, excluding everything of a descriptive 
or personal nature. But such was the cleverness 
of the official news agencies and propaganda 
forces of the Central Empires and of the Entente 
countries that they contrived usually to give to 
the same bare facts a different coloring. 

The newspapers of the Central Empires had 
a free circulation in Switzerland. In reading the 
enemy papers, reports of all events had to be dis- 
counted, of course, because of their natural preju- 
dice and because of the government censorship, 
and of its carefully directed propaganda. Every 
word had to be scrutinized, every line watched 
in hope that some little item of unusual signifi- 
cance had escaped the watchful eye of the censor 
and some interesting fact could be developed 
from an innocent-looking phrase. 

As in all cases of severe censorship, the 
printed news was supplemented by nrnior. In 
Switzerland rumor flourished. Its swiftness and 
accuracy were marvelous. It outstripped trains. 
It was independent of the telephone and tele- 
graph, which every one was afraid to use. Spies, 
you would be told, and you couldn't tell what 
kind of spies, would hear every word spoken on 
the telephone and read every word written in a 
telegram. Rumor is different from the social 
gossip with which we are familiar in this coimtry. 
When or how it starts one does not know, but, 
true or imtrue, after it has once started on its 
roiinds each man and woman who passes it on 



The Vanishing Nesw Service 63 

seems to feel a responsibility for its accuracy. 
The result was that in Zurich, Berne, and Ge- 
neva a rumor would be repeated in the very 
same words and phrases. These underground 
news channels conveyed chiefly political or mili- 
tary rumors, but occasionally were given over to 
gossip of a personal nature to add spice and hu- 
man interest. Rimior probably flourished all the 
more because public meetings were looked upon 
with suspicion. Pamphlets, which, as I have told 
you, it was the convention to send anonymously, 
were distrusted, as all anonymous communica- 
tions deserve to be. But because of the circula- 
tion of newspapers and because of this network 
of rumor from all countries, Switzerland became 
known not only as the world's center of war 
intrigue, but also as its center of news and infor- 
mation. It was considered so important as a 
news center that France and other countries 
maintained oflices there for the sole purpose of 
reading and analyzing the enemy and Swiss 
press. The French oflice sent to Paris a volimii- 
nous report twice a day. Undoubtedly Germany 
kept as close a watch on news from our side. 
How I worried, during those months of waiting, 
that here, where news was gathered from all the 
world and sent to all the fighting countries, there 
were no American papers in circulation and prac- 
tically no mention of American affairs, except 
such as Germany itself wished to give. Our 
official war communique did not start imtil 



64 A Year as a Government Agent 

months later and was always remarkable for its 
brevity and for what it did not tell. Even after 
an American army was active on the front, its 
formtila seemed to be, "Nothing of interest to 
report." 

Here in the world's news center, in the midst 
of the conflicting countries, it seemed to me that 
we were cut off from the rest of the world. 
Through the obstructions of censorship and prop- 
aganda we saw only the dim outline of events 
colored and distorted ; we did not see clearly in 
any direction ; we could only guess at what was 
really happening in the world outside. I remem- 
ber commenting once in Mr. Hugh Wilson's 
drawing-room upon this bewildering situation, 
and saying that even in America I had not felt 
so far away from the war as here, shut in be- 
hind the frontiers of Switzerland. Not at all, 
I was told, the war was very near; any 
evening with the wind in the right direction, 
if you went to the top of that near-by hill, you 
could hear the firing! 

In addition to my interest in the news situa- 
tion, I tried to familiarize myself with the Swiss 
magazines, technical and general, which had 
later to be reached with our feature articles. 
There were writers whose style and influence 
had to be studied, for to them should be sent 
special information about America. Since the 
pamphleteering was outworn, in what form 
would the information be of greatest value? 



The Vanishing News Service 6$ 

There was, too, the complicated question of the 
motion-picture situation in Switzerland. In 
what way could the cinema houses be wrested 
from the control of the Germans, who at that 
time had the firmest grip upon them and were 
using them in the most adroit manner, as a means 
of spreading their propaganda? 

I spent time in preparing specific recommenda- 
tions and a budget for my department. My 
efforts to obtain information took me to many 
of the Swiss cities and several times to Zurich, 
which is not only the largest city in German 
Switzerland, but was considered the center of 
pro-German sentiment. There I made friends 
with a prominent German-Swiss lady, whom I 
had met at a small meeting which had been 
arranged for me on one of my visits by Mr. 
Haguenin, the clever, sauve chief of the French 
Maison de la Presse. Mr. Haguenin had been 
for thirteen years before the war a professor in 
a Berlin university. He knew the general situa- 
tion well and was trained in the diplomatic at- 
mosphere. Perhaps that was why, from the be- 
ginning to the end of my efforts in Switzerland, 
he alternated between a real desire to be of 
friendly assistance to me, and a distrust of my 
methods and a fear of a lack of discretion on my 
part, which might precipitate some great calam- 
ity. The meeting he had arranged in Zurich was 
held at Professor Bovet's house. There were a 
few leaders of the rather backward Swiss suf- 

5 



66 A Year as a Government Agent 

frage movement, a few women pacifists, and one 
or two prominent women, such as my future 
friend, who were unconnected with any move- 
ment. These women had been asked to meet 
me, of course, as a student of the conditions of 
women and children. And here I might say 
how absurd my reputed mission must have 
seemed to the Swiss. I wonder they did not 
resent it. The condition of their women and 
children is in no way bad or peculiar enough to 
justify the appointment by a friendly nation of 
a special agent to study it. 

But since I conceived it to be my duty on 
every occasion to state the real nature of my 
mission, I explained to these ladies that I was 
not there to study the condition of women and 
children, as they had heard — that the original 
announcement had been a mistake — ^and I told 
them what my work was really to be, and they, 
too, as all other Swiss to whom I had spoken of 
it, became interested in it and approved. 

A few days later I received the kindest letter 
from the lady of whom I have spoken, in which 
she even apologized for her boldness in writing, 
and asked me, since the hotels in Zurich were 
imcomfortable and crowded, to stay with her and 
her husband on my subsequent visits there. 
This was the beginning of a friendship that was 
to be of the greatest comfort and assistance to 
me and which I shall always value. Their house 
became a real home to me. Think of such kind- 



The Vanishing News Service 67 

ness and hospitality to a foreigner whose posi- 
tion in Switzerland, the most sensitive and 
nervous of countries, was at that time thought 
to be doubtful. This Swiss family had many 
German connections and interests. Their atti- 
tude on the war was honestly neutral, as they 
believed it their duty to be. Yet they took me 
into their home and gave me good, sound, dis- 
interested advice and, what I valued most of all, 
friendly affection. It is one instance only of 
the kindness I met on the part of the Swiss, 
especially in German Switzerland, which, at that 
time, was supposed to be so very antagonistic 
to the Allied side. 

I needed all their friendship and assistance, 
because some of my experiences were really un- 
pleasant. The first time I stayed with them 
was on March 5th. They had arranged to ask 
a number of prominent Swiss professors, writers, 
and editors to a little meeting at their house to 
discuss in what way they could help with my 
plans. When I arrived I found that there was 
difficulty about the meeting, which was sched- 
uled for the next evening, and my friends were 
clearly disturbed. The people whom they had 
expected to come were refusing, one after an- 
other. My hosts must have begun to fear that 
they were harboring a spy — a criminal in the 
eyes of their country's law. They must have 
begun to regret their incautious, generous hos- 
pitality. On tjie rnoming after my arrival I 



68 ' A Year as a Government Agent 

was ushered into a closed room for a conversa- 
tion with them. Our interview might have been 
painful if they had not been so kind. They be- 
gan to question me. They had to be discreet 
and not say too much. I admired their sim- 
plicity and honesty and, at the same time, their 
determination to really know what was at the 
bottom of the activities of this stranger whom 
they had seen only once before taking into their 
home. They spoke of the difficulty they had 
found in getting people to meet me. They said 
that there seemed to be some confusion about 
why I was in Switzerland — that there were re- 
ports from the American legation that I was 
not there for the purpose for which I myself 
said I had come, and that this laid me open to 
grave suspicion of attempting unauthorized and 
illegal work. I showed them my letter of ap- 
pointment, and the articles on American affairs 
which had been sent to me through the legation 
pouch and which I had brought with me to offer 
to the Zurich papers and magazines. They went 
over this material carefully and conscientiously 
and found in it nothing suspicious ; no violent or 
illegal attacks upon Germany, and nothing con- 
trary to Swiss neutrality laws. Their advice 
was that I should at once obtain from the lega- 
tion a letter stating that I was the representative 
of the Committee on Public Information, as I 
claimed to be, because, they said, Mr. Creel's 
committee was unknown in Switzerland as a 



The Vanishing News Service 69 

Department of the United States government, 
and, therefore, his letter of appointment meant 
nothing, while the legation stood for the sole 
American authority. Such a letter from the 
legation was all the more necessary because it 
was from the legation that the rumors which 
discredited me had emanated. They advised 
that I should attempt nothing further until I 
obtained this letter. Then they hoped I would 
return to Zurich and make their house my head- 
quarters. They were very firm that the work I 
proposed to do would be of value, and equally 
firm against it being carried out under any false 
cloak or in any secret manner. I decided to cut 
my visit short and return to Berne at once. 
But since I was in Zurich, with several hours of 
government time to spend before the train left, I 
put it to use in calling upon some of the news- 
paper offices with my articles in hand. 

On a previous visit to Zurich it had been ap- 
parent that I was being watched in the Baur-au- 
lac Hotel by two large, aggressive-looking men. 
Again I thought that I was being followed on the 
street, but nothing serious happened and I re- 
turned on the evening train to Berne — depressed, 
but determined to increase my efforts to place 
my work upon a proper basis. 



CHAPTER IV 

APPARENT DEFEAT 

TN Berne, next day, the members of the legation 
^ took a great interest in what had happened 
on my trip to Zurich ; especially did the friendly 
wife of the charge d'affaires come to my bed- 
room to ask why I was so depressed and what 
had happened. What had really happened — and 
our diplomats must have known of it even while 
I was in Zurich — ^was that I had escaped arrest. 
Later I was told in whispers, but not by our dip- 
lomats, that the Swiss authorities had been de- 
termined to put me imder arrest if I undertook 
any propaganda activities. I have seen confi- 
dential reports to this effect. Now I am not 
particularly afraid of being arrested; in fact, I 
shoiild have gone cheerfully to prison in Wash- 
ington if I had thought it could have helped the 
suffrage cause. That I did not, was due to the 
fact that I entirely disapproved of the tactics of 
the militant suffragists and believed them total- 
ly unnecessary in America. But an arrest in 
Switzerland was a different matter. I should 
have hated it most heartily. It would have been 



Apparent Defeat 71 

the evidence needed by the legation that I was 
an \infit person for tactful work. It would have 
served to prove that honest methods in such 
work were impossible. It would have ended my 
effort to work for my country. And think how 
it would have been used as an argimient against 
the discretion and ability of all women for all the 
future. I can hear the anti-suffragists and anti- 
feminists explaining how, when a woman was 
sent to Switzerland to do simple, honest publicity 
work, she had behaved in such a manner that she 
not only had antagonized the American lega- 
tion, but that she had got herself arrested by the 
authorities of a friendly country ! It would have 
been more difficult to explain away than Miss 
Rankin's tears in Congress. 

On my return from Zurich I, of course, imme- 
diately followed the advice of my Swiss friends 
and requested from the charge d'affaires, Mr. 
Hugh Wilson, a letter vouching for my status 
as a representative of the Committee on Public 
Information. At this point, the minister, Mr. 
Pleasant Stovall, of Savannah, Georgia, was 
about to return from an absence of several 
months and take up his duties in Switzerland, 
and my request was referred to him. Mr. Sto- 
vall is a pleasant-mannered man, with *'a cer- 
tain use in the world, no doubt," but he does not 
like a woman in an official position and he 
thinks nothing at all of woman suffrage. He 
believed the fact that I am a woman, added to 



72 A Year as a Government Agent 

the fact that I am a stiifragist, would, in itself, 
prove an insurmountable obstacle to my doing 
work of value for my country. In addition, he 
was opposed to any activities abroad of the 
Committee on Public Information. We had a 
long conversation on March 8th. He refused to 
give me the letter I needed. I could obtain no 
assistance from him, except of a social nature. 
He made a great point of his willingness to enter- 
tain me. But I had not gone from New York to 
Berne to be entertained at luncheon and dinner 
by the American minister. At the end of our 
interview he asked, with the air of making some 
sort of a concession, that I should put in writing 
to him everything we had said. I am glad he 
made the suggestion. I have the letter on 
record.^ My answer to his objections had been 
that I could not admit the validity of his opposi- 
tion to the work of the Committee on Public 
Information, since it had the expressed authori- 
zation of President Wilson, but that if he would 
write out his objections to me personally and as 
a suffragist, I should be glad to submit them with 
my resignation to Mr. George Creel. My letter 
was never answered or acknowledged in writing 
— such are diplomatic cautions! The next day 
I was given a small scrap of paper on which was 
written in very faint pencil, almost illegible, the 
following message from the State Department in 
Washington to the Berne legation: ^ ''The Presi- 

1 Appendix XV 2 Appendix XVI. 



Apparent Defeat 73 

dent sanctions Mrs. W/s plan and believes she 
should begin work. Let her without formal an- 
nouncement engage office, commence handling 
cable service, motion picture, and other work." 
At last the State Department had become aware 
of my appointment as other than a student 
of women and children. I was delighted. I 
thought I could begin my work at once. It was 
now that I asked Mr. Dresel for the second time 
for the temporary use of the vacant Red Cross 
rooms and was refused. But I was not dis- 
couraged. I accepted the offer of the Italian 
journalist for space in his one-room office. I 
bought ftimiture and moved it in. I engaged a 
translator and a secretary and I registered a code 
address. I was going, with all my stored-up 
energies, to begin to work for my country. I 
thought the obstructions I had been meeting 
were to end at last. And with ordinary citizens 
they would have, but not with the diplomatic 
representatives of the Berne legation! I had 
another interview with Mr. Stovall and fotmd he 
was as determined as ever in his opposition. He 
refused again very positively to give me a letter 
vouching for my position. He refused to ac- 
knowledge or answer the letter I had written to 
him at his own request, but he asked my agree- 
ment to consider it as never having been written. 
It was then my turn to refuse. I thought it wise 
to let it stand. He said he would cable to the 
State Department for further directions, which 



74 A Year as a Government Agent 

meant only more obstructions and more diplo- 
matic delays! 

Just at this time I received a cable from 
Washington telling me to go to Paris to confer 
with Mr. James Kemey, the representative of 
the Committee on Public Information, who 
finally had arrived there. It was a propitious 
time for a second absence from Switzerland be- 
cause my efforts to work there were still blocked 
by Mr. Stovall's refusal to give me the letter I 
needed. Without it there was only my unsup- 
ported and disputed word as to my true status, 
and without it I felt I was not even free from the 
danger of arrest. I left Switzerland March 13th. 
It was on this trip, the night of Wednesday, 
March 13th, that the most unpleasant experi- 
ence of my whole career took place. I have 
never liked even to speak of it. Of course, I 
realize that there is nothing really humiliating in 
being shut into a little closet by the custom 
authorities of a strange land and being stripped 
of yotir clothes — almost entirely — ^when you are 
merely traveling alone in the peaceful and 
orderly pursuit of your duty to your country. I 
believe I have even more than the ordinary 
amount of courage, but when, after I had pre- 
sented my passport for examination to the 
Swiss officials at the Custom House in Geneva, 
I was bruskly told to "Come this way," and 
led into that little closet, my heart sank. Again 
I felt Very much alone. There was nothing to 



Apparent Defeat 75 

do but submit calmly. I talked to the woman 
who conducted the formalities. I asked her if 
many women were examined, if they made 
objections. I foimd there were few, that some- 
times they became hysterical, that they did 
smuggle things even in their hair. I asked if the 
examiner herself did not dislike the performance 
of her duties and she said she did, but times were 
hard during the war and she had to live. The 
only thing the careful inspection of my clothes 
and me disclosed was the receipted hotel bill, 
which I had paid ten minutes before and hastily 
stuck into my coat pocket. This experience was 
one of the many difficulties I should have escaped 
if my passport had been a diplomatic one, as 
was promised to me at the time of my appoint- 
ment, or probably if the attitude of the Ameri- 
can legation toward me had not aroused the 
suspicions of the Swiss authorities as to my 
standing. 

As annoying and distressing as my own expe- 
riences were, they sank even for me into insignifi- 
cance and became very unimportant indeed in 
comparison with the momentous world events of 
that period. While I was waiting in Berne I 
read in the daily papers and heard rumors of 
such things as the great threatened strike in 
Germany and Austria from which the German 
Liberals, exiled in Switzerland, hoped so much. 
At the best it might mean the immediate over- 
throw of the Kaiser^s government. But it was 



76 A Year as a Government Agent 

doomed to failure. In Austria it came prema- 
turely; in Germany, it was suppressed severely. 
This was the time, too, of the Russian debacle, 
of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, and 
of the final signing of the German peace treaty 
there. It was now that the Germans began to 
boast daily of how the wheat from the Ukraine 
would feed their people, while the rest of the 
world starved. 

Although rumors in Switzerland were concern- 
ing themselves chiefly with such things as the 
unfavorable conditions in Austria, the lack of 
clothing, food, and supplies of all kinds, the out- 
break of epidemics, and with the chance of Bol- 
shevism proving a two-edged sword in the hands 
of the Germans; on the other hand, they made 
one grave by suggesting perilous difficulties of a 
social nature, revolts, even revolutions in France 
and in Italy, difficulties which fortunately never 
developed. But apart from rumors, the situation 
as it was openly known was bad enough. The 
official military reports from the combatants on 
all the fronts became each day more disturbing 
for us. It was not only in Switzerland, but on 
my trips to France, that my own little problems 
shrank to ever more puny proportions. No one 
could have remained self-absorbed in Paris in 
the months of February and March, 191 8. It 
was a time when general discouragement could 
be understood, when a distrust in America's 
ability to send help in time to be effective could 



Apparent Defeat 77 

be excused, and when admiration for the deter- 
mination of the French to make every final sac- 
rifice and hold out to the very end, was mixed 
with a fear that they might not do it. Streams 
of people were leaving Paris in taxis, in cabs, in 
wagons, in any sort of vehicle obtainable, and 
were to be seen walking in single file, as it seemed 
to me in recalling these scenes, toward all the sta- 
tions, with their boxes and bags carried by them- 
selves or by porters. Otherwise the streets had 
a vacant look except for American officers. The 
houses and shops seemed deserted ; the windows 
of the latter were strangely ornamented by pro- 
tective strips of paper pasted on in geometrical, 
designs. The public monimients were being 
covered with the greatest leisureliness by sand- 
bags moved slowly one by one, by a handful of 
the superannuated men, too decrepit to fight. 
The German airplane attacks were constant. 
The advance of the German army was threat- 
ening. 

I was in Paris on the Sunday of the great ex- 
plosion which took place in a near-by munition- 
plant and seemed to shake the city to its founda- 
tions. I wondered at the huge, widening colimm 
of smoke that rose straight and steady to the 
sky. On this day the American Red Cross won 
particular praise and admiration from the French 
press. They were on the scene instantly, trans- 
porting and caring for the wotmded without 
fuss or red-tape. 



78 A Year as a Government Agent 

As to the airplane attacks, my blood was 
curdled many times by the shrieks of the sirens 
on the motor fire-engines, which dashed through 
the streets of the city to warn of approaching 
danger. This warning noise itself seemed to be 
chosen as an invitation to hysterics. When it 
was heard, I have seen the people on the streets 
dart away in flocks to some near-by shelter in a 
formation like birds startled from a field. But 
I have sat at dinner at the Ritz through an at- 
tack when only the waiters showed any uneasi- 
ness. I heard much of the cellars prepared as 
refuges, but never saw one. I have lain in bed 
through several raids, too tired and comfortable 
to seek a shelter; and the first time mistook the 
great deafening noise of the protective anti- 
aircraft barrage for the dropping of enemy 
bombs and wondered if the entire German air- 
fleet had not been sent this time to demolish 
Paris completely in one great effort, so constant 
and unremitting seemed the explosions. 

I was in Paris the first day of the attack of the 
big gun. In the early part of the day it was be- 
lieved to be an attack by airplanes, and, looking 
overhead, there were airplanes to be seen circling 
around in the sky. Were they German or were 
they French? It was impossible for a mere 
observer on the streets like me to tell. Then 
rumor — that strange thing — ^began to run about 
and say that the great explosions which came at 
such regular fifte^ia-minute intervals were not 



Apparent Defeat 79 

from airplanes. What could it be? Were the 
Germans really at the very gates of Paris and 
bombarding the city? No, it could not be that, 
said the wiseacres. A bombardment from near 
at hand would be quite different. In just what 
way it would be different I could form no clear 
conception. That day especially there was a 
stream of people moving steadily toward the 
railroad stations. I walked to luncheon with 
two young Americans of the Red Cross, looking 
at it all. When we were on the Rue de Rivoli, a 
bomb or shot or whatever it was struck the 
Quai d'Orsay across the Tuileries. The noise 
was shattering. I felt as if that particular shot 
had singled me out and gone through the back 
of my head. One of the young men with me 
started to run. He did not know whether he 
was going toward or away from the noise, but 
he felt it was the moment for action. The other 
young man crouched upon the pavement, his 
head low and his knees wide apart. He looked 
so funny that, in spite of my throbbing head, I 
laughed. He had been to the front and had 
been told that was the thing to do. We found 
the restaurant deserted and the service dis- 
turbed. After limcheon I walked on the boule- 
vards and was struck by the crowds of people 
who were standing about unprotected outside 
— ^not inside — the subway entrances, which were 
used as shelters. That day I was trying to have 
my passport visaed for a return to Switzerland. 



8o A Year as a Government Agent 

All public offices were closed during a bombard- 
ment. When the sirens had sounded the end of 
the attack, I hurried to the Prefecture of Police, 
found it open, and was surprised by the haste 
and total lack of red-tape with which,* for 'gnce, 
business was despatched. The officials gave me 
little attention. They were talking to one an- 
other of the report that the attack was by a big 
German long-range gun. The afternoon papers 
had an account of it. What was going to happen 
next? No one could tell. 

It was on this trip to Paris that I first met 
James Kemey, the director for France of the 
Committee on Public Information. He was so 
friendly my heart warmed to him. He wanted 
to help with all the details of our work together. 
The contrast with the attitude of the American 
representatives in Berne was almost overwhelm- 
ing. I did not have to seek hidden meanings be- 
hind his words, nor dread a desire on his part to 
deceive. There he was — hawk-nosed and dark- 
browed — a warm-hearted, generous Irishman 
who could sit and talk by the hour in glowing and 
picturesque terms on any and every subject on 
the face of the globe. His talk was full of wisdom 
and humor, but I sometimes thought, in ray 
hard and practical way, that he talked when he 
could have been working. 

He had his own difficulties. He did not speak 
French and some of the diplomats in Paris criti- 
cized him on that score. Diplomats always 



Apparent Defeat 8i 

speak French. He owns and edits a newspaper 
in Trenton, New Jersey, and had never been 
abroad before. Some of the diplomats talked of 
his lack of suitable experience. Mr. Kemey ad- 
mitted there was something on their side. There 
was a great difference, he conceded, between 
Paris and Trenton, and you noticed it more in 
Paris than in Trenton, he thought. 

He was as shrewd as he was kindly in his 
estimate of people. Once during a discussion 
about President Wilson's character, when the 
question arose and grew animated as to whether 
he was a cold-blooded politician or whether he 
was a great man with warm, human feelings, 
Mr. Kemey decided the point. "Yes, he is a 
great man," said Mr. Kemey, ''and as to his 
feelings, he is very warm-hearted — steam-heated, 
it's true," he added. He loved to laugh, and we 
laughed together over the ''women and children" 
story, and the other trying and fantastic experi- 
ences I had had in Switzerland. 

The first day I saw him he had just returned 
from a motor trip to the front and was full of all 
he had seen. There were many things I should 
see, too, and many people I should meet. You 
see, he wanted to share everything ! So while my 
own attention was really fixed upon such dry-as- 
dust subjects as still photographs and motion 
pictures and the daily wireless news service (just 
where was the spot at which it arrived in Paris? 
And what was the quickest way to get it to the 

6 



82 A Year as a Government Agent 

embassy and off again to Switzerland?) he, in 
the midst of establishing his own office and 
getting to work, foimd time to arrange meetings 
for me with journalists whom he thought inter- 
esting, and with army officers and others who 
were in charge of activities related to mine. 

Every day on this visit I went to the Path6 
Freres* motion-picture factories at Vincennes or 
Joinville, inspecting, titling, and working over 
films which had been sent to Paris to be prepared 
and forwarded for use in Switzerland. The way 
for me to Vincennes and Joinville was long and 
tiring. Captain David Gray, who was then in 
charge of the photographic division of the Signal 
Corps, with headquarters at Vincennes, would 
go there with his assistants quickly and comfort- 
ably in an army motor. But I could not go 
with them. There is a rule or regulation which 
prohibits women from riding in army motors. 
Have you not heard men object to woman suf- 
frage on the ground that it would kill chivalry? 
Have you not even heard them say that women 
might have to stand in the street-cars if they 
voted? Well, my right to vote had nothing to 
do with the fact that each morning I would take 
the crowded Metro, and stand to the end of the 
line and transfer to suburban surface cars, which 
finally, after a change or two and after wandering 
and jerking through forests and the countryside, 
would deposit me a short walk from the Pathe 
factory. The trip each way took from an hour 



Apparent Defeat 83 

to an hour and a half, and the time spent fretted 
me enormously. But so tame are we women 
still, that at first I accepted the absurdity of the 
situation without a thought. Here I was doing 
what might in old-fashioned manner be called a 
man's work, but without the facilities and com- 
forts which the humblest and least busy of my 
co-operators enjoyed. One night it struck me 
with full force, and my feminist soul revolted. I 
lost a night's sleep as a consequence and held 
forth the next morning about it to Captain 
Gray. He, too, is a feminist. The following 
day I went to the factory in his motor, on the 
plea that I was not a woman, but a United States 
official. But in spite of the waste of time, I am 
glad I was forced to take those long rides in the 
surface cars a,nd the Paris Metro. I was filled 
with admiration for the French women guards, 
motormen, and conductors, whom I saw so con- 
stantly. They seemed the best type of worker 
— ^man or woman — I had ever seen. They were 
well-built, deep-chested, thick-bodied women, 
strong through and through. They were serious 
ajtid business-like, almost stem. But even the 
hard business of living and working in war-time 
had not deprived them entirely of a French- 
woman's coquetry. Their neat imiforms were 
worn smartly and their little caps were placed 
at a becoming angle on their black, tidy heads. 
On one or two of the trips to Vincennes and 
Joinville, Mr. Kemey accompanied me in a taxi. 



84 A Year as a Government Agent 

In those days it was a tritimph to find a taxi 
that would consent to take you in the direction 
you wanted to go. But it was a triumph without 
much satisfaction, because the taxis were old and 
very jolty, slow, and uncertain. I remember a 
trip back to Paris in a taxi of an extra- small size. 
A very fat French officer who had been detailed 
to help us in our work drove with us. With true 
French politeness he insisted that Mr. Kerney 
and I should sit on the back seat, and then, to 
my wonder and alarm, he placed his mountain of 
flesh on the little seat which lets down. He was 
very voluble and very entertaining. He spoke 
no English and Mr. Kerney spoke no French. 
He told us of the early days of the war and of 
the great slaughter at the battle of the Marne 
in the time of open warfare, before the French 
had had time to intrench or to do an3rthing but 
meet and stop the enemy. Mr. Kerney, his 
Irish volubility outmatched by the Frenchman's, 
would fidget and ask, ''What is he saying now?" 
I'd translate hastily and listen at the same time, 
while the French officer talked on and on. We 
passed the fort of Vincennes. There, he told us, 
he had been stationed after the first simamer's 
fighting. There's where the spies were shot. 
Any morning at daybreak, even now, he said, 
you could hear the shots and know that one or 
even a half-dozen of these men had met their 
fate. He himself, when stationed there, had 
had charge of the firing-squad and had given 



Apparent Defeat 85 

the commands which shot them dead. Yes, a 
great number, he said, had been executed under 
his orders. I have told you that I particularly 
dislike spies. I accept the fact that execution 
is an inevitable way of dealing with them when 
discovered in war-time. But I looked at the 
green embankment and I pictured the scene at 
daybreak, and I must have thought of the spies 
as men who climg to life, with women some- 
where who loved them and who would wait and 
wait and perhaps never know their fate. I must 
have thought how hard it was to meet death in 
that manner, walking up to a certainty of it — 
not like taking your chances with your com- 
rades in a battle, not even like dying at the end 
of an illness with lowered vitality, not even as if 
there were some one to take a last message, but 
an inevitable hard fate to be met alone. And 
there against that soft green hillside at day- 
break on a morning, steel-gray and cold, such 
as this had been when I left the Place Vendome, 
these men had been shot to death. I could not 
have been thinking of them as Frenchmen who 
had betrayed their coimtry for money, or as Ger- 
mans ready to commit any atrocity, but merely as 
human beings who lived and loved more or less 
as others, who had dared a little more and 
had been caught. I looked at the kindly, fat 
French officer and thought how conscientiously 
the crudest war duties had been performed. He 
had given the command for a great number to 



86 A Year as a Government Agent 

be shot dead, he had told us. I said to him, "I'm 
sorry. How terrible for you ! " ' ' Oh, not at all, ' ' 
he said. "It is the simplest thing. They stand 
with their backs to the embankment. They can 
fall only one way. They waver a little and fall 
on their faces.*' And he showed with a gesture 
of his hand how it was done. "That's all," he 
said; "it's very quiet — it's not terrible at all — 
pas du tout. ' ' Mr. Kemey fidgeted. * * What was 
he saying?" he asked. "What is he telling you 
now?" 

Here in Paris while I was working over many 
little details, the cable correspondence with 
Washington kept up. I had come from Switzer- 
land annoyed because my work was being de- 
layed by what seemed to me the merest petty 
obstinacy on the part of the minister. I had left 
instructions with my newly employed secretary 
in Berne to have everything in readiness for me 
to start work in earnest on my return, because I 
still believed, even after my two months' experi- 
ence, that now at last the obstacles were about 
to be removed. Mr. Stovall had said he was 
cabling for fiuther instructions, you remember, 
even after the receipt of the cable saying the 
President sanctioned my plans and wanted me 
to go to work. I believed instructions would 
come again to the same effect, and the second 
time Mr. Stovall would have to accept the de- 
cision. But the first cable that reached me in 
Paris from Mr. Creel was a shock. Mr. Stovall 



Apparent Defeat 87 

had been cabling, evidently, about my wanting a 
letter from him, but had neglected to say why I 
needed it. Mr. Creel's cable ^ dated March 15th 
said that the Berne legation promised me all un- 
official aid and attention, but that the minister 
objected to the issuance of a letter recognizing 
me as the representative of the Committee on 
Public Information. This attitude Mr. Creel 
seemed to uphold. His cable continued, "You 
have my letter of appointment, and I prefer 
work inaugurated without connection with the 
legation or indorsement by it.'' So did I. I 
wanted no indorsement by the legation, but I 
wanted no further damaging misrepresentations 
by it, either, and to insure that end I needed 
the letter. My answers tried to explain the 
situation:^ that I could do no effective work in 
Switzerland with the legation blocking every 
step,' and I cited the incident of the previous 
week in Zurich, when I had been near arrest. 
I explained to Mr. Creel why his letter of appoint- 
ment was insufficient. I explained that the min- 
ister had offered me every social attention, but 
that my desire was for serious work and not 
to be entertained. I said, belligerently, that I 
had gone to Switzerland to fight Germans, not 
American officials. I complained that Mr. 
Creel's cable of March 15th, in my opinion, did 
not uphold me, but would confirm the legation 
in their hostility toward my work, and that I 

1 Appendix XVII. 2 Appendices XVIII and XIX. 



88 A Year as a Government Agent 

believed it was impossible to achieve results 
under such conditions — therefore, I resigned. I 
asked for instructions as to disposition of ac- 
counts, etc., and said I would return to Berne 
to close affairs. 

It had been a long struggle. Mr. Creel, I be- 
lieve, had done his best to retrieve the mistake 
of the women-and-children announcement into 
which he had been driven. He probably had 
taken the question several times to the President 
and had obtained his ''sanction" to ''Mrs. W.'s 
work," and his instructions that I should begin. 
It must have been very irksome to him to carry 
on this struggle in the midst of Congressional in- 
vestigations and of all the storms that raged 
about him in America. My resignation must 
have brought a sigh of relief. One storm center, 
at least, was to disappear. But what about 
having this woman back in America? She was 
chairman of the largest and concededly best- 
organized single organization in the coimtry. 
\y" The New York State Woman Suffrage party had 
an enrolled membership of more than 1,015,000 
women. Would she have grievances? Would 
she talk? She had the ear of the press and the 
public in New York State. Would she add to 
the general difficulties which encompassed the 
much-harassed Committee on Public Informa- 
tion? Perhaps she had better not come back. 
Besides, she is a hard worker and has ability, 
and good workers are needed to organize the 



Apparent Defeat 89 

work in Europe. She has had a rough deal in 
Switzerland, too. For her own sake, also, it 
would be a pity to let her come home with a rec- 
ord of failure. Yes, it is only fair to let her stay 
in Europe. Kemey wants help; he has been 
cabling for it. 

It's my guess that some such fears and some 
such reasonings were responsible for the cables 
from Washington that followed. Answering 
quickly my cabled resignation came this mes- 
sage from Mr. Creel i^ ''While perhaps not ad- 
visable for you to return to Switzerland, con- 
sider you so valuable to our work in general that 
we wish you to please stay in Paris and co-operate 
with Mr. Kemey pending further instructions." 
I considered this the acceptance of my resigna- 
tion and prepared to return to Berne and end 
my activities there. I cabled: "Doubt possi- 
bility of remaining in Europe. Will send de- 
cision upon returning to Paris from Berne, after 
I have received definite instructions." No more 
blind acceptance of government work for me! 
Next time everything would have to be explicitly 
defined and understood ! 

I left that night, March 23d, for Berne to 
pack my tnmks and close my affairs. It was 
the day of the attack on Paris of the long-range 
gim, and I finished with my passport visas just 
in time to catch the train. 

In Berne, at the moment of abandoning my 

1 Appendix XX. 



go A Year as a Government Agent 

post, I found everything established in the office 
of the ItaHan correspondent and ready at last 
for me to go to work. I offered Mr. Stovall a 
final opportunity to change his mind and give 
me the letter I needed. He would not. My 
passport formalities were extraordinarily facili- 
tated by the legation, and in two days I was 
ready to leave. 



CHAPTER V 

TO AMERICA AND BACK 

T^HERE were a few little incidents of interest 
*^ about my leaving. One was that Professor 
Bovet, a leader of Swiss opinion, came in behalf 
of a group of influential Swiss in Zurich to urge 
that I remain and carry on my proposed work. 
Rumor had reached them that I was going. 
They were ready now to give active assistance. 
I did not consider their request, although on the 
strength of it I might have reopened the cable 
communication with Mr. Creel. But I felt it 
would be a waste of time. I had come to the 
conclusion that a trip back to Washington would 
save time in the end, if the difficulties were to be 
settled at all. 

Another incident of interest was that the sec- 
retaries of the legation gave me a farewell 
dinner! They must, indeed, have been glad to 
see me go, or perhaps they were more human 
than I thought and were a little sorry that it was 
I they had had to oppose, or perhaps they con- 
sidered me vanquished and were generous. Or 
the dinner may have had no particular signifi- 



92 A Year as a Government Agent 

cance, because from the day of my arrival in 
Switzerland, all during the time they were try- 
ing with the greatest adeptness and unscrupu- 
lousness to obstruct my efforts to work, they had 
made social advances to rae. They had asked 
me to dine and to play bridge with them and to 
go to all of their parties. 

At my first interview with Mr. Hugh Wilson, 
when he told me that he knew me only as on a 
mission to study conditions of women and chil- 
dren, and refused to accept my own solemn as- 
surance that I was in reality the representative 
of the Committee on Public Information, he 
asked me to Itmch to meet his wife. This atti- 
tude never ceased to surprise me, but it was true 
diplomacy, of course. Once, I heard Mr. Stovall 
tell with admiration of a foreign diplomat who, 
whenever he contemplated a particularly treach- 
erous act against a man, would treat him with all 
the greater courtesy and social consideration. 
Mr. Stovall did not, of course, mention the ugly 
word ''Treachery." Ugly words as applied to 
conduct one admires are not in a diplomatic 
vocabulary. I have told of the emphasis he had 
placed upon his willingness to ask me to luncheon 
and dinner. 

I had accepted the invitations of the secre- 
taries often; in the beginning with the hope 
that I coiild overcome some of their prejudice 
and because imtil toward the end I did not com- 
pletely realize the character of their opposition. 



To America and Back 93 

When I did realize it I found it possible but 
very distressing to separate these young people 
in their kindly attractive social hours from them- 
selves as my implacable, imscrupulous enemies. 

When I dined with them and played bridge 
with them, I liked them. I enjoyed the compan- 
ionship of my own countrypeople. What they 
felt for me, I don't know. I think diplomats do 
not allow themselves simple or himian feelings. 
They are ambitious. They must get ahead and 
make good records. They must obtain and send 
back to Washington useful information. They 
must carry out instructions from the State De- 
partment and at all costs maintain the suprem- 
acy of their own department. 

Our diplomats in Berne probably sought my 
society from mixed motives. I might be diverted 
from my efforts. It was also necessary for them 
to keep in touch with me and know what I was 
doing. How could they block it otherwise? It 
was to the second secretary of legation that fell 
the particular task of keeping an eye on me. He 
is a young man with a distinguished, studious 
air, whose ruling quality is caution. He it was 
who told me many of the spy stories, who had 
wanted me to go to St. Moritz; and whenever I 
drifted a little away, it was either he or Mr. 
Hugh Wilson's friendly wife who would ask me 
to a meal. 

The situation was absurd, and it brought 
about amusing and annoying incidents. Al- 



94 A Year as a Government Agent 

though all the legation members were seen freely 
and publicly in my society, they would not allow 
a legation messenger to deliver to me any of the 
parcels of literature which were sent to me by 
the Committee on Public Information through 
the diplomatic pouch. To get them — and they 
were heavy and cumbersome to carry — I had to 
go myself to the legation, because if anything 
should be sent to me, it might be construed by 
some one — ^by whom, I don*t know — perhaps a 
hotel clerk or a German spy — ^as a recognition on 
the part of the legation of my official position ! 

The second secretary took great pains to ar- 
range the farewell dinner. Several new members 
of the legation staff had arrived recently, and 
they, too, joined in the feast. It was very charm- 
ing in the gay dining-room of the Bellevue 
Palace, at the table just to the right of the door 
as you go in. There were flowers and extra 
courses chosen with extreme care and obtained 
with difficulty, because of the food rations. I, 
the guest of honor, was late. Diplomats make 
a point of being punctual. I was leaving Berne 
early the next morning for America, but the 
packing and confusion attendant upon a hastily 
decided departure had nothing to do with my 
lateness. Just as I was leaving my room punctu- 
ally, I had been given a letter written by my 
chief host, the second secretary. This time it was 
official and it was rather long. I wish I had kept 
it so that I could quote from it for you. It was 



To America and Back 95 

very severe in tone; it accused me of various 
things. One, I remember, was that I had made 
accusations without basis of fact that the lega- 
tion was withholding the news service from me. 
Of course, Mr. Hugh Wilson had withheld it until 
the receipt of the cable from Mr. Creel, which, 
for some reason unknown to me, had made him 
become officially aware of Mr. Creel's existence. 
I have already told you about that. There were 
other points made against me, too, in this letter, 
but what it said is not of importance. The in- 
teresting thing was that the false relations we 
bore to each other had brought about the absurd 
situation that my enemies took for attacking me 
the very moment when they, as friends, were 
about to entertain me. They chose a moment 
for this last attack when I had no means and no 
time to answer carefully their letter. They knew 
my records had already been sent to Paris 
through the diplomatic pouch. I could get no 
stenographer. I was to go to their own farewell 
dinner and leave early in the morning. I won- 
dered at their letter. My suspicions were 
aroused, but I could not determine why it was 
written. It proved to be an attack which they 
were preparing in order to furnish evidence 
against me for a complaint which Mr. Stovall was 
sending to President Wilson, to reach him before 
my arrival in America. There it was promptly 
submitted to me, as Til explain later. What did 
I do about going to the dinner? Whether I went 



96 A Year as a Government Agent 

or not has no bearing on this story, of course; 
but I went. They were all gay and friendly; 
they drank my health and a pleasant trip, and 
in a confidential discussion after dinner I was 
told not to bother to answer the letter, but to 
destroy it and forget it! 

Next rQorning at the railroad station, just as I 
was about to take the train from Berne, I received 
a telegram^ through the legation from Paris, 
in which Mr. Kemey quoted from a cable^ which 
Mr. Creel had sent to Paris for me, not through 
diplomatic sources, but through the Naval In- 
telligence — a means of confidential communica- 
tion which did not extend to Switzerland. Mr. 
Kerney's telegram, quoting Mr. Creel, said that 
if I desired to continue my work in Switzerland 
I should do so with the support of the President, 
or if, in my opinion, the legation had destroyed 
my usefulness there, I was to stay in Paris and 
undertake definite jobs there, after which I could 
go to London and to Stockholm on special mis- 
sions. It looked as if I was to write my own 
ticket now. Anything, in fact, except return to 
America. Stay in Switzerland? Of course I 
wanted to stay. Hadn't I spent two wretched 
months and more making myself familiar with 
the situation, while in my mind the importance 
of the work grew and I knew that it ought to be 
done and that I could do it? But here was an- 
other delay. I could not get off the train and 

1 Appendix XXI. 2 Appendix XXII. 



To America and Back 97 

stay in Berne on the strength of this telegram, 
because all my personal effects and official papers 
had already started for Paris. My passport was 
visaed by the Berne legation for America. It 
would no longer permit me to stay in Switzer- 
land. I had to go on at least as far as Paris to 
obtain a fresh passport, and in addition to assure 
myself definitely from there by cable that I 
should have a statement from some authority 
known in Switzerland to show that I was not 
an impostor. It was Mr. Creel again who said 
now that with the support of the President I 
should remain in Switzerland. Suppose the lega- 
tion still maintained, as before, that they could 
not credit anything that came from Mr. Creel 
or from any other source than the State Depart- 
ment? And suppose that, as before, the State 
Department should remain silent for another 
two months? No; I must see that my official 
position was established clearly. I left word in 
Berne that I might return at once, and went on 
to Paris. From Paris next day, March 29th, I 
replied to Mr. Creel through the Naval Intelli- 
gence that I believed the work in Switzerland 
was important and should be continued. ^ I 
wanted to complete the task if it was possible to 
do so honestly. I protested that I did not feel 
my effectiveness had been destroyed, if only the 
legation's misrepresentations and suggestions of 
mystery about my work should cease. Such a 

I Appendix XXIII. 
7 



98 A Year as a Government Agent 

letter as I had asked from Mr. Stovall would 
insure it. I said I was convinced it would be of 
value for me to go to America on a steamer sailing 
April 6th, for a full discussion of all the commit- 
tee's work in Europe — for by that time I had 
some idea of the difficulties which the other rep- 
resentatives were meeting and I had constructive 
suggestions to make as to fiu*ther activities which 
ought to be imdertaken. As to the mission in 
France, England, and Stockholm, which had 
been suggested for me, I had insisted upon know- 
ing details, and they were never given. I waited 
in Paris a week in uncertainty. I worked each 
day with Mr. Kemey, developing details of 
future work for Switzerland. Hearing nothing 
further from Mr. Creel, I left Paris for Bordeaux 
the morning of April 6th. 

On arriving at Bordeaux that evening, I found 
the American consul had been telephoned to from 
the Paris embassy to stop my sailing and have 
me return at once to Paris. The steamer, fortu- 
nately, had been delayed for two days, so back 
I went. I found I was called back in response to 
a cable from Mr. Creel saying that he wanted 
me to stay in France for important work. As to 
the important work in France, still no details 
were given. Hadn't he ten days before cabled 
me I should return with the President's support 
to Switzerland if I wished to, and hadn't I cabled 
back that I did wish it? But now I was to cable 
my acceptance of his request to stay in France, 



To America and Back 99 

and only after that full particulars could be sent 
me. 

It must have seemed to the committee in 
America very desirable to keep this woman from 
returning. Twice I had cabled that I must have 
full details of any proposed new work before I 
would consider it. This time I was annoyed and 
did not answer the cable, but returned to Bor- 
deaux to find that the American consul was again 
in receipt of an urgent message from Paris that 
I was not to sail, but to return there once more. 
Again the steamer's sailing was further post- 
poned and again I went back to Paris and foimd 
this time that the reason for my being recalled 
was a cable from Mr. Will Irwin, who had been 
put temporarily in charge of the foreign educa- 
tional work of the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion. Mr. Irwin's cable said:^ ''If you find it at 
all possible to get along, prefer your staying in 
Berne, because your work there would be more 
valuable to us than your work with the French." 
Pough! No word of the letter I was demanding 
of the legation in Berne or of the termination of 
the diplomatic misrepresentations imder which 
I had been laboring, and here I had taken the 
ten-hour trip back and forth from Bordeaux to 
Paris four times on four consecutive days! and 
was to take it again the next day for the fifth 
time. The weal her was damp and the railroad 
compartments still heated, and it meant physical 

lAppendix XXIV. 



loo A Year as a Government Agent 

suffering to me, because of my foot. I left a 
cable^ with Mr. Kemey to be sent to Mr. Irwin 
and declared that no further cable or message 
could drag me from Bordeaux again. I said in 
the cable to Mr. Irwin that I had received Mr. 
Creel's cable telling me to remain in Paris, and 
his own telling me to return to Berne. That I was 
sailing for America on the Niagara^ because my 
work abroad was unsettled and because I be- 
lieved a personal conference with Mr. Creel 
would be ultimately time-saving. I agreed that 
I would be of greater value in Switzerland than 
in France and referred to cables I had sent to 
Mr. Creel giving the conditions under which I 
would return there — ^namely, that the legation 
should be forced to recognize my position offi- 
cially. I said I should need also a diplomatic 
passport to facilitate my work. (All the other 
representatives of the Committee on Public In- 
formation had diplomatic passports!) Failing 
these conditions, I considered my efforts to work 
in Switzerland were so hampered that I would 
not return. I said that if on my arrival in 
America my conditions could be met, I would 
return at once to Europe after a conference with 
Mr. Creel in Washington, and please to arrange 
for my sailing back to Europe about May ist. 
I expected to arrive in New York about April 
25th and did so, having left Bordeaux finally on 
the Niagara^ April 12th. 

lA^pendix XXV. 



To America and Back loi 

The trip home was dreary. There was none 
of the thrill of going to the great adventure, 
however tragic it might prove. The steamer was 
small and uncomfortable; the passengers were 
an incongruous group. There were several 
writers, French and American, coming to Amer- 
ica to sell their stories and their opinions of the 
war. There was a French mission coming to urge 
that France wanted its military forces supple- 
mented at once with American armies, not re- 
placed later after their own extinction. In fact, 
they wanted our soldiers untrained, unequipped 
if need be, but they wanted them hurried across 
the ocean as quickly as possible. In looking 
back, it seems strange that as late as April, 191 8, 
our intention oi helping promptly and effectively 
should have still been mistrusted. But the 
greater number of passengers were members of 
the Red Gross and the Y. M. C. A. who had not 
liked their work or their superiors and were re- 
turning home with a grievance. 

I myself felt harassed. I could not look for- 
ward with joy to going home and seeing my 
family, because I might have to leave them 
again at once, and not to leave them meant the 
defeat of my plans to do effective work honestly 
for our coimtry. 

No one met me on the dock. Those were war- 
days and steamers came and went stealthily. I 
had thought that only my immediate family and 
the Committee on Public Information would 



102 A Year as a Government Agent 

know of my return. But I found that interviews 
about it had been given out from Washington 
and it was heralded in the newspapers as another 
proof of woman's unfitness for any place but 
home. Yes, according to the papers, I had made 
a failure. In several accounts I was described 
as suffering from a nervous breakdown; I, whose 
pet vanity is that I have the endurance of ten 
strong men! I made no answer and gave no 
explanations, although I was urged to do so by 
the officers of the New York State Woman Suf- 
frage party, of which I was still chairman, be- 
cause they said I owed it to woman's work in 
general. I wasn't very much interested in what 
the papers said. My attention was fixed upon 
going back to Switzerland and finishing my work 
there. 

One newspaper account I remember particu- 
larly, because from it I saw how difficult it is to 
judge one's own situation objectively. This 
account was very complete. It described my 
mission to Switzerland, of course, as a failure, told 
of my controversies with the legation in Berne, 
suggested that I had wasted my time in many 
unnecessary trips to Paris— *' joy rides" in the 
slang of to-day, but with no joy to the rider! It 
seemed to put the blame for all difficulties upon 
me. I felt that I had every right to be aggrieved. 
But this very account, I foimd later, was be- 
lieved by our diplomatic secretaries in Berne to 
have been inspired by me in order to put myself 



To America and Back 103 

in a favorable light before the public and to put 
them in the wrong ! They did not want to have 
their obstructions to my work known, and they 
thought it was I who had published them. Be- 
cause of their absorption in their own interests, 
they ignored everything else in the article. The 
statement, it seems, had been given out by Mr. 
Will Irwin, and he, undoubtedly, thought it im- 
partial to both sides. 

When I arrived in New York I still hoped to 
carry out the program I had cabled to Mr. Irwin, 
go to Washington for an interview with Mr. 
Creel in which everything would be settled as I 
wanted it, and start back to Switzerland within 
a few days, after having had a glimpse of my 
family. It was not to happen in quite that way. 
The first words with which my little girl greeted 
me were, ''Papa has news for you which he says 
will make him and me very happy, but which 
you won't like at all." It developed that Mr. 
Creel had written to tell my husband that I was 
coming back with the idea of returning to Europe 
at once, but my position in Switzerland had 
been so prejudiced that it was doubtful if I could 
return at all. 

I saw Mr. Creel at once and presented to him 
a carefully prepared statement of all my experi- 
ences, including copies of letters I had exchanged 
with members of the legation in Berne and of the 
cables I had received and sent. Mr. Creel, on 
his part, submitted to me the letter which Mr, 



I04 A Year as a Government Agent 

Stovall had written President Wilson, in which, 
as I remember, the minister said that, although I 
was a lady of great charm, he thought it best for 
the country's interest that I should not return 
to Switzerland, because I had done various rep- 
rehensible things and had made unfounded accu- 
sations against the legation. 

I do not now recall the various steps by which 
it was finally decided that I should return to 
Switzerland on my own terms. I believe it was 
partly because I had acquired full information 
of the situation there and had detailed and defi- 
nite proposals to submit for future work. Per- 
haps it was also somewhat due to my own strong 
conviction that not to send me back would be a 
regrettable waste of human effort and would 
cause an unavoidable delay in starting a neces- 
sary work. Other considerations, too, may have 
influenced the decision. But it must have taken 
courage on Mr. Creel's part to reopen the ques- 
tion of my going back in face of the general oppo- 
sition not only to me myself, but to the methods 
upon which I still inflexibly insisted. Of course 
I had maintained throughout that no underhand 
work was necessary; that it should all be done 
honestly and openly and with the knowledge of 
the Swiss government. The legation and other 
diplomatic and propaganda representatives, and 
the journalists who were familiar with the situa- 
tion in Switzerland — Mr. Carl Ackermann, for 
instance — still declared such methods were at 



To America and Back 105 

the very least impracticable. The opposition was 
being emphatically expressed. It was cabled to 
various government departments here from all 
sources in Switzerland which the legation 
reached. Even Mr. Kemey accepted my return 
as impossible. But Mr. Creel did reopen the 
question and President Wilson again indorsed 
my plans and said I should go back with his 
support. 

With a view to clearing the situation, Mr. 
Creel and I had several interviews with Mr. 
Hans Sulzer, the Swiss Minister to the United 
States. Mr. Sulzer was a prominent business man 
in Switzerland, with a national reputation for 
ability and fairness. The post of minister had 
been thrust upon him to meet an awkward war 
situation. He had not been trained in diplo- 
macy as a career, and for that reason, perhaps, 
he saw that the work we planned could be carried 
out with benefit to Switzerland as well as to the 
United States, and he undertook to notify the 
Swiss government of my mission. He gave me 
a letter of introduction to the President of the 
Swiss Confederation, in which he fully explained 
the nature of the work I proposed to do. Presi- 
dent Wilson wrote me a letter^ in which he said : 
"I am glad to learn that your own convictions 
and investigations lead you to indorse the unre- 
servedly American policy of absolute openness. 
We have nothing to conceal, no secret ambitions 

1 Appendix XXVI. 



io6 A Year as a Government Agent 

to further, and our activities in every foreign 
country are properly confined to a very frank 
exposition of America's war aims and national 
ideals." Mr. Stovall was notified officially this 
time of my return and the true object of my ap- 
pointment. The military attache in Berne was 
instructed by cable to secure an office for me. 
My plans and budget were accepted. It was 
agreed that before leaving I should choose an 
American stenographer and a German- American 
translator, who were to follow me in a few days. 
My diplomatic passport arrived in due course, 
and, although things had not progressed as 
quickly as I had hoped, within several weeks 
everything was settled, and for the second time 
I sailed away.^ 

This time it was as hard to go as the first time. 
While there was no imcertainty as to my plans, 
there was no sense of adventure. I knew ex- 
actly to what I was returning — a situation which 
was dreary in the extreme. You can imagine that 
any satisfaction which I felt was mixed with the 
greatest reluctance and distaste. 

I went in a transport by way of England. 
When we landed at Liverpool we heard much of 
German successes. It was some time before I 
realized that while we were at sea there had been 
a really significant enemy advance. Those early 
days of June, 1918, looked very dark for the 
Allied cause. 

^Appendix XXVII. 



To America and Back 107 

I had taken letters to Lord Beaverbrook, the 
Minister of Information, and to Lord North- 
cliffe, chief of British propaganda in enemy coim- 
tries. I spent several days in London and saw 
these gentlemen, as well as the heads of the 
British cinema propaganda and the cable and 
wireless news service, and, thanks to their kind- 
ness, I gained quite an acquaintance with British 
methods. We discussed many plans for co-oper- 
ating in Switzerland, which in the end came to 
little. 

Just about that time the styles in govern- 
mental investigations were undoubtedly running 
toward information departments. There was a 
Parliamentary investigation of the British Min- 
istry of Information that was almost as bitter as 
the Congressional investigation of Mr. Creers de- 
partment, and probably as hampering to its work. 

My visit to London was uneventful enough. I 
saw no air raids, but foimd the streets there even 
darker at night than the streets in Paris. I was 
struck by the number of men at this critical time 
in restaurants, theaters, and about everywhere — 
many more than in Paris. Every British soldier 
must have spent his leave in London. In com- 
parison again with Paris, the food seemed to me 
insufficient, although while I w^as there pork 
products were taken from the ration list and 
made a great difference. The men and women I 
met were depressed. One felt everywhere that 
the war had lasted a long time. 



io8 A Year as a Government Agent 

In thinking of the darkness of this period, it is 
almost with apologies that I tell of my pleasure 
and happiness at being given a little dog. No 
one but a fellow dog-lover will understand it. It 
happened almost accidentally. I was talking to 
an old friend and telling him of my winter's 
experiences in Berne. I had told him how for 
the first time in my life I had been alone among 
strangers and had not liked it. Even a dog, I 
felt, would have helped. As soon as I had said 
this, we saw that here I was on my way back to 
be again alone among strangers, and again I 
should want the companionship that a dog can 
give. So off we went to find one. We looked at 
many. The one I decided upon is a sober little 
white Sealyham, with a black spot on his back, 
with short legs and a rough coat and a brown 
patch over one eye. Perhaps that is why he can 
look at you so wistfully. He had a preposterous 
kennel name, but I promptly rechristened him 
^' Sonny." Sonny is an aristocrat. You can see 
it, no matter how dirty and grimy he is. He is not 
one of those high-strimg, egotistical, reactionary 
aristocrats, but one whose breeding has resulted 
in an imperturbable calm and a poise which no 
circumstance whatever can shake — from air raids 
to canine conflicts. In Berne when a great Ger- 
man police dog met him on the winding staircase 
of the hotel, took him up by the nape of the neck 
and shook him like a rat. Sonny alone, after his 
rescue, was calm. The owner of the police dog 




SONNY 

The author's constant companion 



'C 



To America and Back 109 

was hot and breathless; I was pale and trem- 
bling, but Sonny wagged his tail serenely and 
was ready at once to pass it by as an incident of 
no importance. He is particularly unobtrusive; 
so much so that many times on our travels he 
would have been overlooked and lost if he had 
not had in his own quiet way been on the lookout 
to store himself safely under the seats of trains or 
cabs. 

From the beginning he was friendly, but im- 
demonstrative. I took him for walks in Green 
Park and spent one afternoon sitting on the grass 
of Hyde Park, trying to make friends with him. 
He soon looked to me for understanding and care, 
and even before we left London we had become 
fast friends. 

These were indeed anxious times. The day we 
left for Paris it seemed that the Germans might 
reach there before we did. It was not yet clear 
that they had already met their final check. 
Again I saw Paris in a gloomy mood. Many 
people had left, still more were preparing to leave 
and were packing their books and their treasures. 
But the business of war, of course, was being 
pushed with more energy than ever. I met Mr. 
Klobukowski, the new head of the French propa- 
ganda activities. I saw other officials, and to 
them, too, I proposed plans for co-operation. 
After a few days I hurried on to Switzerland, al- 
though it seemed a bad moment to begin such 
work as ours in a coimtry which, like Switzer- 



no A Year as a Government Agent 

land, wanted the war to end and was ready to 
hail the victor. Before going to Berne, I stopped 
in Geneva on various matters of business, and 
there I saw again Professor and Madame Rap- 
pard, who welcomed me warmly back to their 
coimtry. Professor Rappard agreed to come to 
Berne in a few days and himself present me to 
Mr. Calonder, President of the Swiss Confedera- 
tion, and to the other members of the Swiss 
Federal Coimcil. 




DR. FELIX CALONDER 

Nev/ly elected President of the Swiss Confederation for the year igi8 



CHAPTER VI 

AT WORK 

WHEN I reached Berne and descended from 
the train I was met by several acquaint- 
ances and was surprised to find Mr. Hugh Wilson 
among them. Could I take it as a sign that the 
hatchet was to be buried? But it made little 
difference, because from now on the diplomatic 
set was to fade from my sphere of activities. To 
the end I had always to send my cables through 
the legation and occasionally came into contact 
with its members over business matters. But 
the social connection was to cease. It did not do 
so abruptly. When I first returned Mr. Hugh 
Wilson*s friendly wife asked me now and then 
to a meal or a party. The minister asked me to 
his Fourth-of-July celebration and was aggrieved 
that I did not go. The assistant military attache, 
who in peace-times is a distinguished pianist of 
foreign birth, and who had shaken his head, 
gently indeed, over my wild schemes, still disap- 
proved of my plans. But he and his witty, sharp- 
tongued wife, who live in a charming chateau 
on the Lake of Geneva, asked me several times 



112 A Year as a Government Agent 

to luncheon and once to a house party. The 
legation secretaries, too, asked me from time to 
time. But I was busy. I had gone to Switzerland 
to work, and I found more work to be done than 
I could manage. The conditions there were not 
well adapted to hard work as we know it here. 
In Switzerland, as in France, offices and business 
houses close each day from twelve to two. With 
the diplomatic set the one-o'clock luncheon and 
the pleasant talk over coffee and liquors drift on 
well into the afternoon. I had no time for this 
generally accepted institution. I organized my 
office on the American plan . It did not close from 
twelve to two, and I remained there through- 
out the day. I had my luncheon of a cup of tea 
and a heavy, dark, Swiss bread sandwich at my 
desk. I went to no dinner parties, and I did not 
live at the fashionable Bellevue-Palace Hotel, 
but at the more secluded Bemerhof . Invitations 
grew fewer. A feeling of social hostility on the 
part of the American diplomatic set arose tow- 
ard me. It settled into enmity. It is not strange 
that it did so. Here I had returned to Switzer- 
land with President Wilson's special support, in 
spite of their efforts to keep me away. That in 
itself must have been difficult for them^to accept. 
But in addition they still predicted, and they no 
doubt believed, that my plans were doomed to 
failure. It was to avoid this failure with all its 
attendant risks that they had tried from the first 
to head off my activities and have me recalled to 



At Work 113 

America. A failure now would be regrettable, no 
doubt, but it would vindicate their judgment. 
I was to prove them wrong, because my work 
from the very beginning was a success. If human 
nature were not faulty they would have rejoiced 
that good work was being done for their country. 
Perhaps they did, but they liked me none the 
more on that account. And that was not all; 
here I was even in little things going against all 
rules and working for long hours each day. 
Wasn't my neglect of that midday social inter- 
course, my refusal of nearly all social invitations, 
a tacit criticism of their easy methods? No, it 
is no wonder that I came to be regarded by them 
in an openly hostile manner. Or, at least, this is 
the way I explained it to myself when, several 
months after my return, I heard that they were 
gossiping unkindly about me and I found that 
some of them bowed to me coldly when we met, 
and others not at all! 

On the other hand, I was treated with marked 
friendliness by the Swiss, both by those I already 
knew and by those I was to meet. On Jtine 26th 
Professor Rappard came from Geneva and pre- 
sented me, as he had agreed to do, to President 
Calonder and to other important officials. I was 
received with the greatest cordiality and friendli- 
ness by each one, and especially by President 
Calonder. Perhaps they had heard that I had 
stood out against the absurd system of secrecy 
which was making Switzerland such a hotbed of 



114 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

intrigue, and that may have had something to do 
with their kindly reception. On my part I was 
impressed by President Calonder's simpHc'ty 
and his clearness of view. He seemed to me a 
big man. I discussed with him and the other 
gentlemen my proposed work and the way I 
planned to carry it out. I assured them I should 
be careful to respect their neutrality laws, no 
matter how severe they were. The^^ were par- 
ticularly interested in a suggestion I made of 
sending a group of distinguished Swiss repre- 
sentatives to the United States to see our war 
activities and to explain the difficu.lties of the 
Swiss situation to the American public, and they 
offered to help in arranging it. In fact, they 
agreed that such general plans as I outlined 
would be an excellent thing for Switzerland as 
well as for us. 

The futiure of my work looked bright. The big 
obstacles were now all overcome, although there 
were still to be many little difficulties. I had 
been very much relieved on arriving in Berne to 
find that good offices had been obtained for me. 
The hotel where I lived is in the center of Berne, 
but because of the crowded condition of the little 
city, the office, a semi-detached villa, was on the 
outskirts of the town, several miles away, across 
a long bridge and up a steep hill. 

The morning after I arrived Sonny and I 
walked briskly over the bridge, marveled at a 
glimpse of the snow-clad mountains, and hvirried 



At Work IIS 

on up the hill. We found the house locked up. 
I was keen to begin my work on the instant. But 
such is not the way government business pro- 
ceeds in foreign countries. In the first place, the 
keys to the office were lost. They had been in 
the possession of one of the military attaches. I 
was told they would be found to-morrow. I 
fretted. I did not want to wait. Oh, well, if 
I was as impatient as all that, some one would 
look for them at once and perhaps they would 
be foimd by afternoon. For two days I waited 
and nagged, and finally, when I was on the point 
of having the doors broken down (it would take 
time to have even that done) , the keys turned up. 

I had a few desks and chairs from my previous 
trip which I had left with the kind Italian jour- 
nalist, but for several days I could find no one to 
deliver them. With the assistants coming from 
America, I must have more furniture. The 
prices ! I became miserly. I couldn^t bear to pay 
the current Swiss rates for plain tables, wooden 
desks, and chairs. I shopped and shopped, and 
tried to rent and to buy second-hand furniture, 
and reconciled myself to the inevitable only when 
I found that Swiss prices, high as they were, were 
less than the official wholesale French prices to 
the American army. 

There was always the problem of delivery. It 
was very slow and some of the bills for it I refused 
to pay, at the cost of terrific scenes. In Switzer- 
land at this time there was no gasolene for mo- 



ii6 A Year as a Government Agent 

tors, grain was scarce and dear, and few horses 
were available; man labor was cheaper. Even 
large desks were hauled by a man, one at a time, 
in a little push-cart over the bridge and up the 
long hill. If the shop was very chic, a big dog 
helped the man. I am telling you a great deal 
about office furniture. It's very trivial, of course, 
but when the people who have heard that I did 
war-work for the government in a thrilling place 
like Switzerland ask me about my experiences 
and my triumphs, I hesitate to tell them that my 
most vivid triumphs were such small, uninterest- 
ing things as having furniture promptly delivered, 
and that the greatest of enterprise and executive 
ability went into buying typewriting and mimeo- 
graphing machines when other people could not 
find them. No one can imagine the time and 
effort that such details cost. Although some 
American commercial companies had offices or 
representatives in Switzerland, they could rarely 
undertake to deliver anything until after the 
war. And very few supplies could be found there. 
Typewriters and mimeographing machines, nec- 
essary in my work, were especially difficult to 
obtain. It seemed impossible to make people 
outside of Switzerland understand the situation. 
When, after hunting vainly throughout Switzer- 
land, I telegraphed to Mr. Kemey in Paris asking 
for typewriters, and saying, ''None obtainable in 
Switzerland," his answer came back: ''Reming- 
ton has a branch in Zurich. Have you tried 



At Work 117 

that?" It was the same thing in trying to make 
the Washington office understand. As my work 
developed, I needed more stenographers. I could 
find none in Switzerland. Mr. Kemey tried un- 
successfully to find some in France or England 
for me. Then I cabled to Washington: ''No 
stenographers obtainable in Europe. Please send 
two additional from America." The answer 
came back, ''Try to find stenographers in Paris." 
I felt abused. Nobody would give us credit for 
common sense, and the exchange of telegrams 
and cables meant long delays. 

Many difficulties, as petty as these, made the 
first days of my return very discouraging. The 
Italian journalist who had offered to share his 
office with me and who was really, I suspect, in 
the Italian secret service, had turned over to me 
one of his translators. I remember standing 
there in my new office one day, looking about — 
two desks and two chairs in one big room, and 
the rest of the three-story villa empty, and I 
alone with only Sonny and the complaining 
translator. I wondered if ever, ever it would be- 
come the beehive I cotild see in my imagination. 
How could an office be organized and real work 
done imder such conditions? The Italian jour- 
nalist came in and I told him how I felt. 

"Oh," he said, "there's no reason to be dis- 
couraged. It will be eight or nine months before 
you are organized. You can't expect anything 
else." 



ii8 A Year as a Government Agent 

Eight or nine months! ''Why," I thought, 
''the war will be over and I'll be home." It 
seemed an eternity. I confided this to my 
British confrere as an amusing example of Latin 
slowness. 

' ' No, ' ' he said ; ' ' that's the way things go here. 
Your country sends you off on a mission and in 
the pressure of more important things forgets 
you. I've been here fourteen months and I have 
not yet found a secretary or an office staff." 

Less than one week after my return to Switzer- 
land my office was formally opened. My Amer- 
ican stenographer had arrived, but not the Ger- 
man-American translator. The fact that he was. 
part German made it difficult to arrange his pass- 
port. I had been fortunate enough to find Mr. 
George B. Fife in Berne. He is an American 
editor who during the time I was away from 
Switzerland had been sent by the American Red 
Cross to undertake propaganda work there. Its 
necessity had been realized by every one. Mr. 
Fife became my assistant. With him, the Amer- 
ican stenographer, and the Italian translator, our 
work began. 

Things in Switzerland never went smoothly or 
easily for us. From the beginning to the end our 
office force was instifficient. Our Italian transla- 
tor proved a broken reed and could not stand the 
American pace. She soon succumbed to an at- 
tack of nervous prostration. The Italian journal- 
ist and a kindly Swiss reporter, neither of whom 



At Work 119 

could speak one word of English, came to our 
rescue for a few days and we went on somehow. 

It was as difficult to find workers in Switzer- 
land as it was to find offices there, and for the 
same reason. Berne was overcrowded with ac- 
tivities fostered by the war, and every person 
capable of doing anything had been employed 
already by the foreign diplomatic offices or by the 
greatly increased Swiss government service. In 
addition, there was the epidemic of Spanish 
grippe, which waxed and waned in Switzerland, 
but was never overcome while I was there. Many 
offices were closed from time to time because of 
this scourge and every office was constantly 
short-handed. 

My immediate problem was to find assistants 
who could translate from English into German 
and into French, and others to open the door and 
answer the telephone, to typewrite and to run 
the Roneo mimeograph-machine. In the first 
days Mr. Fife, a highly paid editor, spent half 
his time in an apron working at the Roneo, and 
all the other office jobs fell to my lot. It was 
clearly a^waste of time, and I determined to find 
a way out. But I had been warned against ad- 
vertising for assistance and against taking any 
one into my employ unless I knew the person's 
entire history. There were the German spies, 
you 'remember, who would be sure to apply and 
who would then find out about everything we 
were doing and report it to the German govern- 



I20 A Year as a Government Agent 

ment. Tales of spies still flourished, but to my 
mind the first necessity was to have the day's 
work done. One day, when our office had been 
opened only a short time, a good story, extra long, 
came in by wireless. Mr. Fife, with his hands 
stained with Roneo ink, each finger held care- 
fully apart, stood before ip.y desk and said we 
simply could not handle it. The Italian transla- 
tor was still ill. We must find some one to replace 
her and some one to typewrite in German. I 
telephoned to the various American offices to beg 
for a few hours' loan of such a person. It was 
optimistic on my part to hope for help. But 
finally at one of the offices I was told in a jocose 
way that here was a woman I could have if I 
wanted. She was a German spy, they said, but 
could translate and typewrite. They were trying 
to keep her shut into a room at that very time 
and out of mischief for a few hours. Would I take 
her off their hands and amuse her? Their joke 
was no joke to me. I was delighted. I told them 
to send her to me, and thus began my policy of 
engaging people thought to be spies or of doubt- 
ful standing to do our necessary work. 

Miss White, the American stenographer, 
awaited the new arrival with excitement. She 
had read Mr. Carl Ackermann's ''Bolsheviking 
the Swiss," and other highly colored accounts of 
stirring situations in Switzerland. When she 
heard my conversation over the telephone — 
heard me ask to have the German spy sent over — 



At Work 121 

she was thrilled to the core. Here was a touch of 
real romance and of real adventure. All women 
spies, she thought, must be young, distinguished, 
beautiftil, and ingratiating. Such a foreign lady 
in the office would put spice into any work, no 
matter how dull. But she was to be disap- 
pointed. It was a new departure — it might be, in 
fact, a real adventtire — to run a government 
office with enemy spies, especially in a place like 
Switzerland, where every advantage was fought 
for so bitterly ; but adventures in reality are not 
what they are in weekly magazines. The spy 
was old and ugly, thin and unromantic — totally 
undistinguished, and had a very bitter tongue, 
and could not hide her hatred of the Allies and 
especially of the Americans. There was nothing 
romantic about her, but she was a good, hard 
worker. We kept her for several months, and as 
our work grew she became for a time indispen- 
sable. She worked in a little room on the second 
floor. I remember on more occasions than one, 
when I did not want to be disturbed, slipping up 
to the second floor and locking the door. She 
must have noticed it, but she never made any 
comment about it. 

There began at once to be many applicants for 
positions, and soon we were employing other 
people, too, who we had reason to believe were 
spies. When any imsolicited person applied it 
was natural in Switzerland to suspect him. My 
method was to engage the suspected applicant 



122 A Year as a Government Agent 

for a trial ; to give him more to do than he could 
do. When his efforts relaxed, or if he began to 
prove troublesome, we would send him away. 
Thus each one contributed at least a few days* 
assistance. One man, when he was dismissed, 
became so persistent in his desire to return that 
I almost grew uneasy. Wherever I went, to 
Zurich or Geneva, I was pursued by him, begging 
for his re-employment. Another man, when he 
was discharged without explanation after a few 
weeks' work, naively brought me a memorial 
purporting to be from a Belgian official, explain- 
ing that, although he had fought in that country 
in the German army, he was a Swiss citizen and 
his career as a German soldier should be over- 
looked, because, the explanation was, he had 
been forced to fight with the Germans as a means 
of livelihood and had not done it through real 
S3mipathy. He would return to our employ, so 
devoted had he become to the Allied cause, and 
work without salary! Most of the people who 
we thought were spies were clumsy and it was 
easy enough to see through their efforts. I began 
to have an understanding of the problems our 
enemies must have to face in maintaining their 
great spy system with such poor himian material. 
This great system, of which we spoke in bated 
breath, for which we had such respect, was ,'not 
invincible, after all. 

My policy of using suspects meant a real 
strain. Although we had nothing to conceal in 



At Work 123 

our press work and were delighted to have copies 
of everything in the office sent to German quar- 
ters (we hoped they were found discouraging), 
we had to guard unceasingly against sabotage. 
For instance, in translating and in typing an 
official announcement, our woman spy substi- 
tuted the word '* offensive" for ''defensive" in 
a case where it made a difference of meaning. I 
kept wondering what form the sabotage would 
take next. What would they, the spies, in spite 
of their clumsiness, think of that I could not 
foresee in time to prevent? Again the familiar 
caution rang in my ears, "You cannot tell what 
they'll do." No, of course I could not tell. Was 
I justified in taking the chance? Would it be 
better to let the work remain undone? Was the 
strain telling on me, and was I growing nervous 
and losing my courage? No, I decided that the 
work was the important thing, and I kept on. 
In spite of the strain and the anxiety and the 
unfailing watchf illness it required on our part, 
I was immensely amused to feel that our enemy, 
the Germans, were doing the drudgery of our 
office for us and were enabling us to do the work 
and to accomplish the results which they began 
now to show so plainly that they feared. It was 
work which would have been impossible without 
their assistance. 

As our office became known, there were, in 
addition to suspects, a niomber of applicants who 
had no business training at all. These people 



124 A Year as a Government Agent 

we encouraged to learn typewriting, mimeo- 
graphing, and telephoning, and gave them every 
facility and assistance during the evenings, and 
some of them became, finally, useful employees. 
ll^Our work grew rapidly. I begged — nagged, 
in fact — for more assistance from America — for 
stenographers, for our long-promised German- 
American translator, and for more editorial help. 
As the months passed, two more stenographers 
and an editor finally arrived, but the German- 
American, whom we needed so much, met delay 
after delay because of his parentage and came 
only after the armistice was signed, when our 
office was being closed. Fortimately, assistance 
came from other quarters, too. A department 
of the United States army sent two representa- 
tives to investigate conditions in Switzerland, 
and their reports upon the efforts and achieve- 
ments of our office resulted in the promise that 
officers from the American Expeditionary Forces 
with journalistic experience and a knowledge of 
French or German would be assigned to us. 
However, only one of them arrived before the 
pressure of our work was ended. Without our 
own enterprise in finding and training assistants 
in Switzerland, we could have accomplished 
little. 

The detail of organizing journalistic work in 
a country like Switzerland with three official lan- 
guages was enormous. Every news item and 
article which came from America had to be first 



At Work 125 

edited to suit conditions in Switzerland, written 
out in simple English, and then translated into 
the two main languages of the Swiss press — Ger- 
man and French; the Italian we never even 
attempted. The French we managed fairly well ; 
the German was always our chief difficulty. 
That was not all. The Swiss press was captious. 
A simple and correct translation would not do. 
The German and French had to be written in the 
accepted journalistic style, which even in the 
news columns was very marked. 

Our first real triumph was to persuade the 
Agence Telegraphique Suisse, the official news 
agency, to accept our daily news service and dis- 
tribute it to the newspapers. For three days 
running we submitted it to them and waited 
their decision with anxiety. We had been told 
that they never, never would take it. The diplo- 
mats had been sure of it. It was useless to try, 
they had said. We would be considered a propa- 
ganda, not a news office. But, like all the 
prophecies of failure, it proved to be false. The 
acceptance of our service by the Agence Tele- 
graphique Suisse was important to us, because it 
saved us from the necessity of establishing ma- 
chinery of our own to reach each paper daily, and 
because news sent out by them had an authority 
which a foreign service could not hope to obtain. 
From the first the news about events in America 
began to appear through them in all the Swiss 
papers and was m,arked "Araerican Service/'^or 



126 A Year as a Government Agent 

" A. S." It was a good introduction to the Swiss 
public for us. 

Of course, we had pitfalls to guard against. 
We were warned that, although the Agence Tele- 
graphique Suisse took our service, they were not 
really sympathetic. We were told to be careful ! 
Perhaps they, too, were a little suspicious, but 
we had to put a big effort into making our ser- 
vice accurate. Our figures of armies and sup- 
plies were so enormous that at first, when they 
were published, we would often find them trans- 
posed or a naught or two dropped. One day in 
Zurich I happened to see such a misstatement 
on the bulletin-board in a street-car station. I 
believed it was one of our German spies at work, 
or an inaccurate translator — I hated inaccura- 
cies ! I hurried to call my office in Berne on the 
telephone, my temper all ruffled, to find that the 
mistake had been discovered already by Mr. 
Fife and was the fault of the Agence Tele- 
graphique Suisse. After that Mr. Fife, with 
patience and enterprise, spared no efforts to con- 
firm and reconfirm our figures by telephone and 
by messenger. In order, also, to guard against 
any oversight of important news, we would tele- 
phone or telegraph directly to the papers, calling 
their attention to items of especial interest which 
were being sent to them by the Agence Tele- 
graphique Suisse. The items themselves we 
would carefully repeat. There were, too, con- 
stant leaks in our service through France, which 



At Work 127 

spoiled some good publicity and threatened to 
invalidate our arrangement with the Agence 
Telegraphique Suisse. That wireless service of 
itself needed as much safeguarding as the work 
of o\xr spies! 

Not only our news items through the Agence 
Telegraphique Suisse began to appear in the 
press, but special articles, too, on conditions and 
methods in this country which were sent directly 
from our own office to the papers and magazines, 
were published. Articles about our great wheat 
crops, about our war gardens and modem agri- 
cultural implements, our hog-raising, etc., were 
accepted by the agricultural papers. The milk- 
industry papers published information about 
American cows; the medical papers, about our 
war-time medical and surgical problems; the 
educational journals, about American schools; 
the socialist papers, about the conditions of the 
working-classes here. Every kind of paper, in- 
cluding women's magazines, art journals, etc., 
was provided with appropriate articles. The 
daily papers, too, took special articles about our 
ship-building, our war finance, and our general 
activities. We would translate, mimeograph, and 
send to the papers official and semi-official re- 
ports which gave information of interest. We 
sent to editors and writers a weekly bulletin re- 
viewing the chief items of the week's news in the 
United States, with editorial notes showing its 
significance. 



128 A Year as a Government Agent 

We found that Renter and Havas supplied to 
the press, as a rule, only inadequate extracts of 
the President's speeches and of other important 
American statements and documents. These we 
supplemented by full accounts carefully trans- 
lated. When we found that the significance of 
any important statement had been overlooked by 
the Swiss papers we would hasten to point it out ; 
for instance, there was the President's now 
famous speech of September 27th, restating the 
issues of the war and giving particulars of what 
the League of Nations and the Peace Treaty 
should guarantee. Its importance was not at 
first realized, and only extracts were published. 
When I saw this I started off in a borrowed 
motor to call upon the editors of the chief papers 
in several of the larger German-Swiss cities, and 
by my visits obtained not only editorial comment 
upon it, but its publication in full, even after it 
had lost its news value. 

But obtaining results was not an easy thing. 
The secret and underhand methods so generally 
practised in Switzerland had aroused suspicion 
as to all new work. Deep-rooted prejudices on 
the part of honest editors had to be overcome. 
Before we ventured to offer our articles, letters 
carefully and patiently written and translated 
were sent to every paper and magazine, and I had 
had many personal interviews with editors to 
explain why the United States government had 
established a news and editorial office in Switzer- 



At Work 129 

land. I undertook to go from town to town and 
call on the editorial offices of the newspapers, 
naturally omitting those of the papers we knew 
to be German-owned. I don't see why these 
visits should have seemed so alarming at first, 
and I don't see why I should have hated them as 
I did. On these occasions I always had a sensa- 
tion, somehow, of everything being dark. Even 
the bright glare of Swiss summer sunshine could 
not dispel that illusion. I suppose it came from 
a combination of shyness and fatigue and effort 
at expressing myself clearly in strange languages, 
because if the Swiss editors did not speak Eng- 
lish — and very few of them did! — we spoke 
French; if they did not speak French, I had to 
try my bad German and often struggle with their 
dialects. Before I had a motor the train-traveling 
in itself was tiring and may have added to the 
difficulties. I always went alone. 

I remember one day getting off a train in a 
little town, with the list of its papers and their 
editors in my hand, and starting on my tour. 
The first man was out. I felt such a sudden sense 
of relief that I took myself in hand at once and 
had the whole situation out with myself. On one 
side were these facts: that if I shirked and did 
not see the three or four editors in that little 
town, nobody would ever know the difference. 
Why, people at home had never even heard the 
name of that town, or of its neighbor, which I 
proposed to visit the next day. If our news did 

9 



13 o A Year as a Government Agent 

not get into every little Swiss paper, who would 
be the wiser? Certainly nobody at home would 
know it was my fault. And if our success was 
only comparative, who was to judge? What was 
it going to be compared with, an3rway? I could 
wait until the next train came along back to 
Berne and take it. On the other side, there was 
only a plan of work that I had laid out for my- 
self to do — certain important things to be done 
first and the intervals to be filled with the com- 
paratively unimportant things, such as the visits 
of that day. And if I hated and shrank from 
doing any of them, that was no reason for not 
doing them. After our work was well started I 
tried to share these visits with an assistant, the 
editor who had then arrived from America. But 
he shrank from them as I did — only he found 
reasons not to do them! So to the end they fell 
to my lot. 

Almost without exception, the Swiss editors 
were most friendly and became interested in our 
plans. The German-Swiss have not a reputation 
for suavity or politeness, but I found them sim- 
ple and kindly, and I like their type. When I 
have work to do I do not like the time which 
politeness consimies. As I progressed, my visits 
became easier and pleasanter, and when I said 
I was the director of the Committee on Public In- 
formation the editors would know what I was 
talking about and welcome me. 

In fact, as a result of those visits there is 



At Work 131 

hardly an editor of a little Swiss paper who 
doesn't know of the Committee on Public Infor- 
mation of the United States of America. Switzer- 
land is a small country, but I am told it has the 
greatest number of newspapers in proportion to 
its size of any country in the world, and I can 
readily and easily believe it. What a task it was 
merely to list all of those papers and magazines, 
to keep them properly catalogued as to size, 
ownership, political and religious views, and keep 
informed of their changing attitude about the 
war and the warring countries! But we did it 
and were always ready to give information to 
other departments as to the exact and latest 
political complexion even of the more obscure 
and smaller ones. 

As our shrewd enemies soon noted, we paid 
particular attention in all our efforts to the Ger- 
man-language Swiss press. Not only were the 
French-Swiss papers already strongly pro-En- 
tente almxOSt without exception, but they were 
outnumbered about six to one by the German- 
Swiss papers. The latter had also another value 
for us. They were the only neutral papers 
printed in the German language, and they had 
free access into the Central Empires. They were 
followed by the thinkers of those countries as 
giving the only available news from the other 
side, and news items and articles published in 
them were freely quoted and commented upon 
in the German papers, 



132 A Year as a Government Agent 

In addition to the various branches of our news 
service, we tried to follow the Swiss papers care- 
fully and to deny some of the innumerable false 
statements and insinuations about the United 
States which were made in them by the enemy. 
This was a big task, because of the control the 
Germans had established over a large part of the 
Swiss press. They had bought in secret or sub- 
sidized a number of papers in both French and 
German Switzerland, which, under an appear- 
ance of neutrality, championed the German cause 
in every way. After the beginning of the war 
they also established several new publications, 
also ostensibly Swiss, with the clear purpose of 
propaganda. These papers sometimes appeared 
as pacifist organs and attacked America for pro- 
longing the war. There were German news agen- 
cies, too, with Swiss names and Swiss directors. 
The Mittel Presse, an association of small Swiss 
newspapers, was supposed to have been subsi- 
dized or assisted in a way to make it a pro- 
German asset, and certainly all of the smaller 
papers served by it showed at first an extraor- 
dinary German bias. Another effective effort of 
the Germans at controlling the news situation in 
Switzerland was said to be through the judicious 
placing of advertising matter. This was of double 
value to them. The papers were subsidized and 
German products were advertised, which fitted 
in with their plan to resume peaceful penetration 
after a victorious end to the war. The German 



At Work 133 

activities with the Swiss press were so great that 
it was an open scandal, and pamphlets and books 
were written upon the subject. The Germans 
used the control of the Swiss press, which they 
had thus gained chiefly to prove indirectly to 
their own people, as well as to the Swiss, that the 
Allies were defeated and America was impotent 
to help. They were still harping upon this during 
the summer of 191 8. They tried, also, to per- 
suade the Swiss that America was untrust- 
worthy; that she was going to invade Switzer- 
land in order to attack Germany. They said that 
when we sent wheat to Switzerland it was bad 
wheat. They ridiculed the Red Cross gifts to 
Switzerland. To further prove our untrust- 
worthiness, they had a great deal to say about a 
mythical secret treaty between the United States 
and Great Britain in regard to Japan, and when 
we had difficulties at the Mexican border they 
proclaimed that we were at war with that coun- 
try and insinuated that we raeant to annex it. 
To meet such assertions, we were kept busy 
cabling to America for denials from the Secretary 
of State and other officials, and for statistics and 
information of all sorts. 

But that was not all. They put an enormous 
amount of cleverness and energy into trying to 
create difficulties between the Allies; for in- 
stance, they constantly published articles in 
their Swiss propaganda sheets and the controlled 
press showing that the French hated the Amer- 



134 A Year as a Government Agent 

icans because of what they called the American 
invasion of France ; they said that the American 
army was fed and provisioned by France and was 
responsible for the enormously increased prices 
of everything in that country; that we had put 
up huge buildings, docks, railroads, storehouses 
there without the consent of the French, and they 
predicted that we would end by controlling 
France economically. They tried to foment trou- 
ble between the British and the Americans by 
harping upon our supposed effort to steal Great 
Britain's place as a leader of commerce on the 
seas. To emphasize the danger to the Allies of 
America's increasing power, some of the German- 
owned papers in Switzerland even put their news 
of the war under the heading of ''The American 
War." According to them, although America 
could not fight Germany, she was going to over- 
whelm her allies. Their press efforts doubled 
during the time I was in Switzerland, which 
seemed to me to indicate that they were fright- 
ened. 

Reading the papers in order to keep track of 
such attacks and to check up our own publicity 
was always a time-constiming task. The papers 
had to be clipped in our own office, as there was 
no adequate press-clipping service in Switzer- 
land. I never found any one to relieve me intelli- 
gently of reading the clippings, so I gave to it 
the quiet luncheon-hours. We could attempt 
to follow only the larger papers and occasionally 



At Work 135 

look over a few of the numerous smaller ones. 
Inadequate as our efforts were, we were soon 
sending back to America increasing quantities of 
clippings to prove the success of our news service. 
We estimated that about two thousand para- 
graphs from our service, including many long 
articles, began to appear weekly in the Swiss 
press, and the nimiber constantly increased as 
the weeks went by. This was, of course, in 
addition to all American war news and reports 
of events which reached Switzerland through 
Reuter and Havas and other correspondents. 
This amount of news may seem insignificant 
to an American news agent unfamiliar with the 
situation in Switzerland. But in view of the 
smallness of the country, of the control the Ger- 
mans had established over part of its press, of 
the scarcity of print-paper and of the intense 
interest of the war and political news from all 
over the world, we felt that we were achieving 
a great success. We believed also that with 
the impetus which our work gave to the interest 
in American affairs, the items from Reuter and 
Havas multiplied in quantity and length. 



CHAPTER VII 

SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES 

nPHE Germans with their great organization 
^ were alert to all danger. They at once took 
notice of our activities and I shall let them tell 
you a little of our success in their own peculiar 
editorial style, full of sarcasm and insinuation. 
Hardly more than a few days after we began our 
work the Kolnische Zeitung commented upon 
"the American influence, which is now making 
its appearance in the Swiss press." It said: 
''We do not want to say that Swiss papers are 
being bought with American money. The honor 
of the Swiss press is imdoubted by us. However, 
it is remarkable that the Agence Telegraphique 
Suisse is publishing, in addition to Wolff, Havas, 
Reuter, etc., articles from an American service 
marked 'A. S.' in the Swiss papers. This Amer- 
ican Service is organized in an absolutely proper 
manner — ^that is, the American communiqueSy 
mostly of an economical nature, are sent out by 
a bureau in Berne. It is obvious that they paint 
the conditions in America in the rosiest colors. 
This American Service, which is well equipped 



Success Under Difficulties 137 

with governmental means, cablegrams, and 
everything necessary to a modem press bureau, 
is being conducted by a young lady, who has 
recently visited all the leading Swiss editors. In 
the near future there will probably appear in the 
Swiss press from the same source longer articles, 
written by prominent Americans. ' ' (There did !) 
"All this seems to us worthy of notice," they 
said. They also explained the advantages which 
they felt we enjoyed over them in our efforts for 
publicity. ''It is an established fact," the K'oh 
nische Zeitung said, ''that these American 
[propaganda] aims are being carried out on a 
large scale, and they [the Americans] are 
hemmed in by fewer impediments than any other 
state, because America has not only promised, 
but is doing its best to provide, Switzerland with 
supplies. It will be wise to keep an attentive eye 
on these things." Then again, on July 13th, the 
German papers reported that "The service of 
American propaganda which has already been 
spoken of is rapidly taking fast hold in Switzer- 
land." The American Press Agency was giving, 
it said, news especially favorable to America, 
principally notices regarding the intensified 
preparations in the United States. ' ' This agency 
calls itself the 'American Service,' and its work 
is similar to that of 'Reuter' for England and 
'Havas' for France." 

The Mtinchner Augshurger Ahendzeitung pub- 
lished a correspondence on "American Propa- 



138 A Year as a Government Agent 

ganda in Switzerland." It complained that arti- 
cles were written treating of democracy against 
autocracy, right against violence. The network 
of the Entente centers, it said, was considerably 
strengthened by it — "Not a day passes without 
articles bragging of American politics." Again 
the same paper said, "In speaking of American 
propaganda in Switzerland, which must not be 
underrated, we have in particular the German- 
Swiss press in view, which seems to succumb 
daily to this propaganda, which is so extremely 
sure of its own ends." It was particularly an- 
noyed that "the Neue Zurcher Zeitung [one of the 
largest and best-thought-of German-Swiss pa- 
pers] accepts the simplest talk of the fight for 
right against violence in this complicated war." 
The editor added, in a note of his own, that this 
did not prevent idiotic Germans from subscribing 
to and reading that paper. 

The support which the Gruetlianery the leading 
moderate Socialist paper in Switzerland, began to 
give to President Wilson and to American poli- 
cies was laid to what a German paper called 
"The American Press Propaganda." And, per- 
haps to ease its own conscience, it comforted 
itself by explaining, again in that editorial man- 
ner so foreign to American readers, that this 
affair had a peculiar odor of American press cor- 
ruption and that the dollar began now to roll over 
Swiss ground, which up to the present had been 
§0 clean. One of the Swiss papers, in reprinting 



Success Under Difficulties 139 

this article, said ''That one judges others by 
one's self." 

The Frankfurter Zeitung found that "American 
propaganda under the direction of Miss Vira 
Whitehouse was very active." Yes, it was! 

The German - owned German - Swiss papers 
masquerading as Swiss added their sarcastic com- 
ments to the general complaint. One of them 
said: "The reader knows the mark ' A. S.' under 
which the American press information, 'Amer- 
ican Service,' is giving out its information to the 
Swiss press free — all too free ! No matter in how 
one-sided and anti-German manner this propa- 
ganda work is carried on, it receives acceptance 
by the Swiss press, because,'' it complained with 
exact truth, ''it offers the only information obtain- 
able about the war craze that has taken hold of 
America. We have for this reason abstained so 
far from criticizing the A. S. But if we look more 
closely at this information service, we do it be- 
cause, as neutrals wishing to be well informed, we 
observe grave omissions." 

They then scolded and accused us of ill faith 
because we had not transmitted to them Presi- 
dent Wilson's speech against lynching in the 
United States. "It is hardly admissible," they 
said, "that the A. S. intercepts an important 
American message from the President to his 
people. It may be highly flattering for the neu- 
trals," they pointed out, "if their intelligence and 
their interests are estimated as just high enough 



140 A Year as a Government Agent 

to give to them again and again information like 
the following: 'America has wood for millions of 
years ! It will raise an army of twenty-five mill- 
ion men! (i.e., one-fourth of the entire population, 
women and children included). It has the best 
and greatest number of shoe-soles,' etc., etc. 
But, after all, we have some interest to hear the 
speeches of Wilson, who is more and more praised 
as the leader of the world's culture." 

Our enemies grew still more sarcastic, and 
gave amusing descriptions of the character of 
our news. They ridiculed and exaggerated our 
assertions that '* Every ten minutes a mimition 
caisson is made ; that during October every three 
days there would be a 9,000-ton ship launched in 
a single shipyard; that the factories of a single 
war manufacturer are turning out every ten min- 
utes [or is it hours? they asked] a completely fin- 
ished automobile ; that daily [or every minute — 
for, according to them, it was impossible to keep 
up with the space of time] 50,000 rifles, millions 
of cartridges, etc., are furnished to the American 
army; that there are in American ground a 
billion tons of coal and similar material; that 
four million trees would be sent to France; that 
American trousers and boots are growing larger 
and that the American soldiers love, above all, 
colored sugar-candy sticks, etc., etc." 

Again they were annoyed. The German sym- 
pathizers described our news items as claiming 
impossible things, and complained because ''The 



Success Under Difficulties 141 

managers of this American propaganda are sup- 
ported by many powerful words from official 
and semi-official people. In the first place," they 
scolded, "the naughty Central Powers, who will 
absolutely not understand that they simply have 
to disappear with America's entry into the war, 
are told that America has twenty - five million 
men able to bear arms!" (The enemy, them- 
selves, exaggerated our power!) "They [the 
American Service] state that America can feed 
all the peoples of France, Great Britain, Italy, 
and the United States, and still furnish rations to 
all the fighting troops opposing the Prussian 
militarism. And, as the final apotheosis: Ger- 
many is beaten! a roll of drums, flourishing of 
trumpets. . . . 'Why?' asks the astonished 
European. You have not to ask; you must be- 
lieve. Faith transports mountains." 

The enemy followed every pro-Entente word 
in the Swiss press closely. Two prominent 
writers had taken a phrase from our weekly bul- 
letin and used it about the same time — one in 
Zurich, one in Basle. The German-owned Swiss 
papers, and the German papers as well, caught 
this incident and agitated about it to a consid- 
erable extent. This is what one paper had to 
say: 

"An event of recent days gives us much to 
think about. In Berne an institution has just 
been created which calls itself 'American Ser- 
vice.' It seems that the Americans conduct this 



142 A Year as a Government Agent 

propaganda in Switzerland on a large scale. We 
are, though, by the joiimalistic performances of 
this American Service, in the agreeable position 
of knowing its source and of guessing its aims. 
The event which startled us is the following one : 
On August 15th there was an article in the 
Neue Zurcher Zeitung bearing the heading ' Amer- 
ica in the War.' It was signed by Mr. L. 
Schulthess. In this article we found the sentence, 
'America's gigantic armaments, her army of 
millions, her ship-wharves, and Liberty motors 
have become a reality and will decide the war.' 
We wondered at this beautiful sentence spoken 
from the mouth of Mr. Schulthess. But two days 
later, on August 17th, we found exactly the same 
sentence in a political article written by Capt. 
Armin Im Obersteg in Basle. This funny co- 
incidence, not unnaturally, had been overlooked 
until the Easier Nachrichten [pro-German], as 
well as the Zurcher Morgen Zeitung [supposedly 
German owned] brought this amazing duplicity 
into due prominence. How did it come about 
that these two gentlemen, Schulthess and Im 
Obersteg, drew from the same source which is 
invisible to other people? Is there any office that 
sends useful publicity straight into their hands? 
The question has been raised publicly, but it has 
not yet been answered in a satisfactory way!" 

And so on and on the German press followed 
our activity and resented and feared our success, 
and by their abuse and criticism helped to give 



Success Under Difficulties 143 

even greater publicity to news of American war 
preparations and accomplishments. 

The success of our work with the Swiss press 
was mainly due, of course, to our great military 
achievements, which were altering the situation 
on the battle-front, and showing that the claims 
made by our service were justified and our state- 
ments true. But there were several little local 
circumstances, too, which were helpful. As the 
enemy saw, the United States was really doing 
its best to provide Switzerland with supplies, and 
Switzerland was dependent upon us for its bread. 
The purpose of our office was not only to gain 
publicity for American affairs in Switzerland, 
but through publicity to bring about a better 
understanding between the two peoples. I saw 
the editors of the larger German-Swiss papers, 
pointed out to them the vital importance to 
Switzerland of cultivating a friendly feeling in 
the United States at this time, and proposed that 
I would send five hundred to a thousand copies of 
every editorial favorable to America which was 
published in their papers to the United States, 
for distribution to our own papers in America, 
with a request that editorial comments should be 
made upon them. This simple proposition 
brought a great response. 

Another circumstance that operated a little in 
our favor was that at this time a Swiss journalist 
with Entente sympathies had published a book 
on the German influence in the Swiss press. He 



144 -4 Year as a Government Agent 

accused a great many papers, which prided them- 
selves on their neutrahty, of being subsidized by 
the Germans. Suits were threatened against him 
and there was a great deal of public comment 
about his accusations. It was only common 
sense to show such papers that in giving promi- 
nence to American news they would be disprov- 
ing the accusations brought against them. But 
the main reason for our success, apart from our 
military victories and the interest aroused by 
them, was, as the enemy himself pointed out, 
the fact that our service was the only means 
which the neutral coimtries and the Central 
Empires had of obtaining information about 
American war preparations (war craze, they 
called it), and, therefore, our news was eagerly 
accepted and printed everywhere. Its effect was 
all the greater because it came from an official 
and responsible source. Otir office soon made a 
reputation for accuracy and fairness. Contrast 
for a minute the simplicity of our methods with 
those which were adopted by other countries 
and urged upon me in the beginning. Under the 
generally accepted methods, I should have mas- 
queraded as being in Switzerland for some other 
purpose. I should have written or had written 
and translated what I wanted to have said. This 
would have been done secretly. I should then 
have found corruptible Swiss and would have 
paid them to attempt to place these articles in 
the papers as their own compositions. These men 



Success Under Difficulties 145 

would probably be of no standing in their com- 
munity and their opinions would have no weight. 
The next step would have been to buy or subsi- 
dize papers, all in secret, in order to obtain a 
hearing. And I should have gathered about me a 
number of untrustworthy people who would have 
had me in their power for any amount of black- 
mailing. I have seen how such methods work 
and how impossible and complicated the results 
are. The loyalty of men who can be bought is 
not to be trusted. They are at the least ready 
to desert one master for another whose employ 
is more profitable. I have been approached many 
times by the secret workers of other representa- 
tives, German as well as Allied, offering to trans- 
fer their efforts to me because they found that 
there was more general interest in the news given 
out openly by the American Service than in their 
own secretly mantifactured articles. And one of 
the tragically amusing incidents of my experi- 
ence in Switzerland was the readiness which 
some of the German-controlled groups and pa- 
pers showed in trying to sell out to us at the 
first whisper of approaching German failure. 
They came, one after another, offering under 
various plausible pretexts to give us their sup- 
port in exchange for financial backing. But 
our policy was undeviating. We bought no 
buildings, business, nor persons, and gave no 
subsidies to enemies or neutrals. Not one 

United States cent ever went to gain publicity 
10 



t-^-^ww- 



146 A Year as a Government Agent 

of any sort in Switzerland in a secret or illegal 
manner. 

Although our chief attention was given to 
the news service, there were various other ac- 
tivities, accepted methods of propaganda cam- 
paigning, which we adopted. They all had 
their peculiar difficulties; for instance, photo- 
graphic materials were bad and hard to ob- 
tain on account of war conditions, and photo- 
graphic work was slow. But every nation 
represented in Switzerland rivaled the other 
in its use of war photographs. They appeared 
not only in illustrated papers and magazines, 
but were displayed in shop windows and in 
little cases hung along the arcaded streets. 
The Swiss public had a queer habit of gathering 
around such displays, during the free noon-hours, 
in the snow-storms of winter and the glare of 
summer under the protection of the arcades. 
The Germans were especially active and success- 
ful in all uses of war photographs. But we were 
proud of the quickness with which our photo- 
graphs of war events were enlarged, reproduced, 
and distributed. We very soon had them dis- 
played in thirty-three cities and seventy-seven 
places. The printing of the titles and the ap- 
pearance of our exhibitions seemed to us to out- 
distance that of any other country, including Ger- 
many. But the main difference in our exhibits 
was that every onlooker knew that they came 
from an accredited committee of the United 



Success Under Difficulties 147 

States and had not descended mysteriously from 
the sky overnight. 

The distribution of Sunday newspapers and 
picture magazines to hotels, reading-rooms, uni- 
versities, and the like had developed into quite a 
science. We joined this game, too, of course, and 
had an advantage because of our great illustrated 
Simday newspaper supplements. The difficulty 
here was to keep them on hand after they were 
distributed, because it was an easy matter for an 
enemy agent to go about and take them away. 
But even the distribution of such material was 
not simple. The other coimtries did it anony- 
mously. If any paper of theirs contained an 
attack on the enemy, which was against the 
Swiss neutrality laws, no one could be held re- 
sponsible, because the distributers were un- 
known. But every one knew that the Committee 
on Public Information was responsible for dis- 
tributing the American papers. Suppose a single 
word offended against the Swiss neutrality laws ! 
The Germans would discover it and complain. 
We would be in jeopardy of trial, or of expulsion, 
or of some terrible imknown penalty. And diplo- 
matic fears would be realized! What could we 
do? The solution was to put the responsibility 
upon the Swiss government itself. We obtained 
their consent to turn over to them everything 
sent to us for distribution, to be read first by 
them and censored before we sent it out; and 
this they did with the greatest consideration and 



148 A Year as a Government Agent 

despatch. Several of our patriotic Stmday papers 
were far from neutral and were systematically 
suppressed! This kindly censoring was a great 
assistance to us, but must have been a real bur- 
den to the overworked, busy Swiss department. 

One of the first questions that had been 
brought to my attention on arriving in Switzer- 
land was the excessive use of pamphlets by the 
Germans and by the Allies. But we found that 
there was still a demand for information in this 
form. We published a nimiber of pamphlets, but, 
in contrast to the usual anonymous method, did 
not hesitate to send them to all the officials of 
the Swiss government and to editors, professors, 
and other leaders of opinion with the compli- 
ments of the Committee on Public Information. 

The very name of the Committee on Public 
Information seemed to invite requests for infor- 
mation of all sorts from editors, writers, speak- 
ers, and others. We found ourselves at the 
greatest disadvantage in trying to answer such 
queries. Supplies and information camxe to us 
from America as slowly as assistants did, and for 
two months our entire library consisted of one 
last year's World Almanac. How I envied the 
Germans their facilities ! While it took us months 
to get even those things we cabled for, their 
books, papers, and information could be sent in 
a day's time across the frontier and could be used 
in their native tongue. They did not have to 
struggle, as we did, with translations and trans- 



Success Under Difficulties 149 

lators. The Swiss told me that the German re- 
sponse to requests for information or for books 
and pamphlets was instantaneous. They had an 
office in Zurich, which was ostensibly a publish- 
ing-house, for the sole purpose of circularizing. 
They provided free books of any character to any 
one of standing who applied. Occasional ques- 
tionnaires, which were masterpieces of efficiency, 
were sent to the Swiss who were on their lists, 
asking in the most polite way if the information 
already given by their office had been of use, in- 
quiring what character of information might be 
wanted in future, and in what other way the 
office could be of service. My heart sank when I 
thought how long it might be before we could 
compete with them in this department. In other 
departments, too, it was much the same thing, 
but we planned always for increased efficiency in 
the future. 

Of course, many of our plans came to nothing. 
In the beginning we had feared that we could 
not obtain a hearing for owe news in the papers, 
or that we could not coiint on a continuance of 
it. My British confrere, after warning me in con- 
cert with every other official representative and 
diplomat, that the papers would never take news 
or articles offered openly, as ours were, explained 
our first success on the ground of its novelty. 
Soon the papers would become used to us, he 
said, and the A. S. would drop from sight. 

Perhaps there was something in this predic- 



150 A Year as a Government Agent 

tion, I thought, although I could not believe it. 
But it was well to be prepared for every emer- 
gency. If the papers would not continue to pub- 
lish our news, it should reach the Swiss in other 
ways and through them reach the Germans, too. 
The best thing to do was to follow the example of 
our experienced and astute enemy, and even go 
beyond it and improve upon it. We saw that 
they had bill-posters placed at every advan- 
tageous spot throughout Switzerland — at the 
junctions of street-car lines, for instance, where 
everybody would stop to read their news. On 
those posters the military victories of the Central 
Powers were blazoned forth until toward the end 
of September, when I rejoiced to see that the 
boards were left bare, for even German ingenuity 
could not then twist the military events of the 
western front into German victories. We made 
careful and tactful plans for a poster campaign. 
We found that we could not advertise bare facts 
on posters in Switzerland; it would be against 
its neutrality laws. The Germans advertised 
their news as quotations from their German- 
owned Swiss newspapers. We could announce 
facts on our posters by ostensibly advertising our 
pamphlets and our motion-picture films, and 
thus the public would become acquainted with 
America's preparations and achievements. But 
as our news continued to appear increasingly in 
the press, we postponed, and finally abandoned, 
the idea of the poster campaign as superfluous. 



Success Under Difficulties 151 

It was really the motion-picture situation that 
was to prove one of the most troublesome of my 
efforts. It was recognized by all the Allies as an 
important means of propaganda, although up to 
this time it had been left almost entirely to the 
Germans. Practically every cinema-house in 
German Switzerland was supposed to be owned 
or controlled by German interests. German 
propaganda films and romantic films setting 
forth the virtues and greatnesses of the German 
people were freely displayed and the Swiss audi- 
ences saw in the German-raade news films such 
things as lines of innumerable sad Allied captives 
being marched off to German prison-camps. The 
Allies agreed that this situation must be actively 
combated. The plans I had early made in our 
own behalf were superseded by the formation of 
an inter- Allied committee. We held many meet- 
ings, but, as in all inter- Allied efforts, work 
progressed very slowly, because of the conflicting 
interests and opinions. There were differences as 
to the policy of renting or selling filras to the 
enemy, of allowing Allied films to be shown with 
enemy films, of the effect a combined blacklist 
would produce. I found myself standing out 
alone against the gentlemen who represented the 
other nations, and having my protests read into 
the minutes of our meetings. However, the very 
idea of concerted Allied action had so great an 
effect that one of the strongly intrenched cinema- 
hou§e companies, supposedly German controlled. 



152 A Year as a Government Agent 

offered for immediate sale its whole string of 
houses. 

One of the questions over which there was no 
dispute in the inter- Allied committee was that 
every story film with a commercial value should 
be rented or sold in Switzerland, only under the 
agreement that a certain percentage of news or 
propaganda film should be shown with it. The 
Italian stories would carry Italian propaganda, 
etc. The question arose as to whether American 
story films in Switzerland were in reality British, 
because they were sold from America to British 
firms and reprinted in England on English stock, 
or in reality French because the method of rent- 
ing them on the Continent was through French 
firms with rights for Switzerland and other coun- 
tries. If they were British, they should be rented 
in Switzerland to be shown with British news or 
propaganda; if French, the news or propaganda 
should be French. The only thing that seemed 
certain was that because of commercial arrange- 
ments and foreign rights they were not American. 
While this and many other questions were being 
discussed, the Committee on Public Information 
made ready for action. We actually had deliv- 
ered directly to Switzerland, with exclusive rights 
for that country, several hundred reels of story 
films, truly American, and enough American 
news or propaganda films to show with them, all 
unconnected in any way with British or French 
commerce, and ready to be presented in Switzer- 




A LUCERNE MILKMAN 



Success Under Difficulties 153 

land as a complete American program. The 
British agent protested. He seemed to feel that 
all American films — even those that had never 
been near England — ought to be British prop- 
erty, but he did not push his protests. 

I was instructed to see and censor each film 
myself personally before releasing it to be shown 
to the public. It would have meant at least 
every day all day long for three weeks ! Thus is 
one*s work planned from a distance of three thou- 
sand miles ! What would have happened to all my 
other activities? — and there were a hundred or 
so, each one seeming to m.e more important than 
the other? Just at this time one of my promised 
assistants from the American Expeditionary 
Forces arrived and gave several weeks to inspect- 
ing and censoring the films and thus saved the 
situation. 

I worked out alternate plans for concerted 
allied or independent action with the films, but 
the plans were never put into operation, because 
the Allied committee had come to no agreement 
when the necessity of controlling the film situa- 
tion ceased at the signing of the armistice. 

The difficulties which delayed the work with 
the films was not only with the Allies. There 
were our own departments to add to the confu- 
sion. Mr. Dresel, who had formerly been the 
Red Cross representative, had now become the 
representative of the War Trade Board. He 
saw some impropriety in the films having been 



154 A Year as a Government Agent 

sent to me rather than to him. Although they 
were commercial films, they had been sent to me 
not primarily for commercial reasons, but be- 
cause I needed them to help in my propaganda 
work. They were still subject to the War Trade 
Board's control, to be released to only such firms 
as would sign certain guarantees demanded by 
it. The War Trade Board's form was to be signed 
by its own representatives, and here I, not Mr. 
Dresel, was in possession of the films ! I offered to 
transfer them to him, or go through any for- 
mality he could suggest in order quickly to con- 
form to the necessary red-tape. I was meek. I 
was ready to do anything if only I could put my 
films to use. But Mr. Dresel would not agree. 
He had not been especially instructed to co- 
operate! He must wait for directions from his 
own department in America. So all action was 
delayed — uselessly, it seemed to me, until cables^ 
were exchanged and he had received explicit in- 
structions to co-operate. Mr. Dresel also brought 
up the question of paying duties to the Swiss 
government on these films and wrote that he 
had nothing to do with that ! I had not thought 
of duties ! The films had come through the diplo- 
matic pouch and had avoided the payment of 
duties on entering the country. That little sen- 
tence in Mr. Dresel's letter seemed to present this 
question as a most tangled and difiicult one. Was 
there a little malice in it? I had no intention of 

1 Appendices 5^XVIII, XXIX, XXX, and XXXI. 



Success Under Difficulties 155 

smuggling. What was to be done? Here again 
I found there was advantage in not being diplo- 
matic. I said nothing to our officials, but took 
the direct course and went simply to the Swiss 
department in charge of import duties. I ex- 
plained that I had had a great quantity of films 
sent through the diplomatic pouch. I told why 
they had been sent in that way and why I needed 
them. I said I wanted to pay the duty. My 
story was listened to with the greatest courtesy, 
and here, as always with every department of the 
Swiss government, I found a helpful spirit. All 
trouble was taken from me; a representative 
was sent from the Swiss department to my office 
and I was surprised to find that duty was 
charged not on the value, but on the weight of 
the films, including the packing, and the wooden 
boxes in which they had come and their own 
tin cases. It was altogether an insignificant 
amount. 

Such petty conflicts are merely examples 
taken at haphazard of innumerable incidents 
which made the work of every American depart- 
ment in Switzerland more than necessarily 
difficult. 

The legation, greatly increased as its activities 
were by the war, was the only one of the depart- 
ments that was permanent. The others, which 
were organized because of the war, were the Red 
Cross, the War Trade Board, the Passport or 
Military Intelligence Division, the Army Pur- 



±56 A Year as a Government Agent 

chasing and Quartermaster's Department, and 
the Committee on PubHc Information. All ex- 
cept the War Trade Board and the legation had 
separate offices. There seemed to be constant 
friction and difficulty between many of them. 
A recommendation to meet this situation had 
been made by the representatives of the United 
States army on their visit of inspection to Swit- 
zerland. It was that there should be a weekly 
meeting of the heads of all of the departments, in 
hopes that with general discussions of our com- 
mon problems, and with a better understanding, 
there would develop some spirit of co-operation. 
It was obvious that it was needed. The legation, 
tenacious of its prestige, was the only department 
which could call such meetings. We hoped it 
would be done, but weeks and months went by 
and, although the plan was much discussed, it 
was never put into operation and we continued 
to the end to go our separate and disjointed ways. 
We were out of touch with our country and 
its idealism — ^most of us felt no reflection of its 
patriotic spirit of sacrifice. Little rivalries and 
petty jealousies grew and thrived in the strained 
atmosphere and acquired an importance they did 
not merit. All that was needed, I think, was one 
man big enough to gather together the various 
elements and remind us that we should be work- 
ing in harmony in a common cause in the greatest 
crisis of civilization. Our lack of co-operation 
and all the unnecessary friction seemed tragic in 



Success Under Difficulties 157 

comparison with the force and unity of the 
enemy, as I met it at every step in my own work. 
Their whole propaganda effort was organized 
with a clearly defined policy and it had been 
developing for thirty, forty, or fifty years. It 
was conducted by an enormous staff thoroughly 
trained to its work. It had the united support 
of the government and the officials and the peo- 
ple. There were no demoralizing congressional 
investigations of German propaganda activities 
at home, as there probably were no petty ob- 
structions and conflicts in Berne. They were 
dangerous enemies. Not only had they invaded 
the newspaper field and captured the motion- 
picture industry, but theaters and opera-houses 
everywhere in Switzerland were said to have been 
bought outright or subsidized by thera. Gossip 
credited the little opera-house in Berne with hav- 
ing received ? 150,000 for -the winter of 191 7-1 8. 
German plays and operas were given by a com- 
pany of German actors, actresses, and singers, 
and it was freely stated that the efforts of these 
people were not confined to their professional 
duties. 

Some of the German plans for arousing sym- 
pathy were entirely legitimate. For years they 
had been perfecting a system of university ex- 
change which not only encouraged an inter- 
change of professors between Gerraan and Swiss 
universities, but allowed students going from a 
university in one country to one in the other 



158 A Year as a Government Agent 

country to retain their class rank without the 
formaHty of examinations. 

In fact, they neglected no means of propa- 
ganda, no matter how indirect. 

Great attention was given to the industrial 
field. They had begun to build a chain of houses 
for commercial p-urposes throughout Switzer- 
land, which agitated and greatly alarmed some 
of our allies. They held exhibits of art — Ger- 
man art! — everywhere. They had a fashion 
show in Basle which frightened the French into 
putting the greatest efforts into a similar exhibi- 
tion of winter styles in Zurich. All this is a 
mere suggestion of the way in which they con- 
ducted their propaganda, and touches only their 
simpler activities with which my own work 
brought me into touch. I say nothing of the 
side of their campaign which resulted in the 
placing of borabs in the Zurich station and the 
discovery of others in the German consular 
building in Zurich, which were said to be meant 
for use in Italy, together with an enormous 
amount of Bolshevik literature; the literature 
was carefully prepared, it seemed,' to weaken 
the morale of the Italian soldier. I shall not 
attempt even to mention the rumors of other 
efforts which the Germans made, in addition to 
their newspaper propaganda, to stir social discon- 
tent in foreign countries, neutral as well as 
enemy, at the time when they believed them- 
selves secure in their own Prussian autocracy. 



Success Under Difficulties 159 

Such efforts were in line with their activities with 
which we were already so familiar in our own 
country and in Mexico. Their force was felt 
everywhere in Switzerland. It needed, indeed, 
a united and harmonious effort on our part if we 
could hope to meet and combat it adequately. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER 

AA Y own difficulties were not confined to com- 
-^ ^ ^ bating German propaganda or to my rou- 
tine office-work. Time was the most precious 
thing I had, and much of it was wasted in Hsten- 
ing to propositions that were impossible, if they 
were not downright dishonest. An unfounded 
rumor had spread about that I had unusual 
power over the fimds at my command. It was 
apparently considered legitimate to approach me 
with any kind of plan and call it propaganda. 
Schemes carefully worked out and artfully pre- 
sented seemed endless. I became acquainted With 
every manner of approach — ^with roimdabout 
insinuations almost too indefinite to catch ; with 
appeals of the friendly sort; with suggestions 
conveying a threat; even with downright de- 
mands in an overbearing manner. These ap- 
proaches were made by men either so well intro- 
duced that I could not refuse to see them, or by 
men I knew well. I felt that I was kept busy 
defending Uncle Sam's purse. For instance, 
purely -commercial enterprises established by 



One Thing After Another i6i 

citizens of Allied countries would ask, with the 
support of their own government officials, for an 
American subsidy on the plea of Allied co-opera- 
tion and propaganda. Book-shops established by 
commercial houses wanted subsidies because 
they were ready to sell American books if we 
would provide them, and any one could see, they 
said, that that was propaganda! Suggestions 
were made that an inter- Allied magazine should 
be started with a large government ftind, which 
I probably was to supply! — to acquaint the 
world with Allied art, literature, and politics. 
The war would soon be over and the magazine 
would no longer be of use to the Allied govern- 
ments and would naturally come with its influ- 
ence and possessions into the hands of those 
people who had organized it — ^among whom, of 
coiirse, I would be one of those to profit. 

The plan which had the strongest backing and 
aroused my greatest indignation was the pro- 
posed formation of an inter-Allied club — omen's 
club, of course. The project included buying a 
building in Berne, the first floor of which was 
already occupied by a French news agency. This 
news agency made a feature of showing in its 
window bulletins of the latest war news, war 
photographs, and maps of the war fronts, and, 
at the time of the thrilling Allied advances, it 
imdoubtedly did good work and attracted 
crowds. It, too, had the backing of its own gov- 
ernment and sought support from other Allied 
II 



1 62 A Year as a Government Agent 

governments. The first plan was merely to hire 
offices for the news agency in several of the 
German-Swiss cities on the most prominent 
streets, and there, as in Berne, display the news 
bulletins and war photographs and maps. I had 
consented to help with the expense of establish- 
ing and maintaining such offices, but as it was 
clear to me at that time that the war was drawing 
to a close, I undertook to do so for periods of only 
three months at a time. I was surprised to find 
that the news agency had been directed to con- 
tract for the rent of properties for periods of not 
less than two years. This news agency with 
which we had become familiar was used as the 
excuse for proposing the inter- Allied club. The 
building in which it was situated might be bought 
by the Germans. The buying power of the Ger- 
mans was an ever-present threat ! It was always 
presented with every proposed plan. If we did 
not do it, the Germans would. In fact, the Ger- 
mans were going to do it, anyway, and the only 
way to forestall them was to hurry and do it 
first, and the decision must be made within 
twenty - four hours. That was the regular 
formula ! Sometimes the time limit was even ex- 
tended to forty-eight hours. Oh, the papers, the 
magazines, the offices, the cinema-houses, thea- 
ters, opera-houses — everything that the Ger- 
mans were to buy ! I wondered what their budget 
must be. Well, the Germans were going to buy 
this particular building, and if they bought it 



One Thing After Another 163 

the French news agency must move. The French 
director, a distinguished gentleman who had 
formerly been in the Foreign Office, would at 
that abandon his work and all would be lost! 
Hence the building must be bought by us. And 
after it was bought it would be used for the inter- 
Allied club. But it was expensive. The price was 
400,000 Swiss francs, or, at the war-time rate of 
exchange, about 100,000 American dollars. How 
could the money be raised? The French director 
undertook to raise a portion of it himself— by 
putting a mortgage on the property, I discov- 
ered ! The remainder of the sum was to be pro- 
vided by me from the fund of the Committee on 
Public Information! By whom this project was 
decided in the first place, I do not know, but I 
do know that it was developed in detail at one of 
the characteristic diplomatic meetings, or lunch- 
eons, which, I was told, was attended by many 
of the more active Allied representatives. Several 
days before the meeting I had been taken out to 
luncheon at a secluded little restaurant down by 
the river's bank by one -of our American repre- 
sentatives, to meet the French director and to 
hear it all explained in the most glowing terms. 
I paid little attention, as my part in the matter 
had not yet dawned upon me. That interview 
was preparatory. It was to arouse my interest, if 
possible. A few days later the American repre- 
sentative came alone to see me and explained 
what was expected of me. I was prompt in my 



1 64 A Year as a Government Agent 

answer. I looked upon the project with disfavor. 
I saw no propaganda in it. But the promoters of 
this plan were not tame. I should not be allowed 
too easily to spoil it. This particular representa- 
tive said, significantly, that his department had 
been asked to make a report on American propa- 
ganda in Switzerland, and he could report that 
I was neglecting big opportimities and, undoubt- 
edly, he himself would be authorized to tinder- 
take the work in my place. I offered no objec- 
tions to that, but I remained firm that I would 
and could have nothing to do with such schemes. 
That was not to be the end. Immediately after 
the meeting I was approached by two other of 
our most prominent American representatives. 
One was a member of the Red Cross Commission, 
the other is a diplomat and had been the chief 
opponent of my plan to work openly. How did 
diplomatic caution come to fail him here? And 
why did he come on such a mission? I believe 
all of these men had drifted into supporting this 
project from a feeling of good-fellowship skilfully 
aroused by the adroit and attractive French di- 
rector of the news agency. They had probably 
been led through pleasant social interviews into 
undertaking to show what they could do for so 
kind a host. One of them, I am told, had said, 
'' Leave Mrs. Whitehouse to me!" Certainly the 
diplomat himself would never have even recom- 
mended such a plan to his own department. But 
the two Americans came to my office and they 



One Thing After Another 165 

urged the scheme. They saw from the beginning 
that I was opposed. Their manner became em- 
phatic. Their scorn was great, that so good a 
plan should be balked by me. The voice of one 
was loud. "Yes," said the Red Cross Commis- 
sioner, "if the war were not so apparently near 
its end, I myself would provide the money." 
His tone was that of a very rich man who had 
found that wealth has a prestige. Physical size, 
a ruddy skin, a loud voice — none of which I pos- 
sess — seemed assets in such a situation. I won- 
dered if I was being browbeaten. I sat back in 
my chair and grew angry. Sonny growled. Per- 
haps the diplomats are right and I am an ag- 
gressive woman. I felt aggressive then. I said 
that I, too, thought the war was too near an end 
for the Committee on Public Information to un- 
dertake any such scheme, even if it had been in 
itself a good scheme. In my opinion it was a 
bad one. Trouble could brew in such a club 
with some of our hotheads. And it could not by 
any feat of imagination be twisted into propa- 
ganda or a suitable thing for me to undertake. 
And there, after all, was the government's policy 
against buying papers, people, or buildings for 
propaganda purposes in a foreign country. No, 
I'd have nothing to do with it. 

There were other accepted methods I would 
have nothing to do with. Entertaining was a 
popular means of "putting things over." When 
I first opened my office I was told of the impor- 



1 66 A Year as a Government Agent 

tance of having a large entertaining fund in my 
budget. A former member of the Red Cross, in 
telling me how necessary it was, said that in 
France the Red Cross had been forced into rais- 
ing a special sum for that purpose, as they found 
it was impossible to conduct business without it. 
And, of course, I was told that it was done by 
the other propaganda representatives. And it 
was! In fact, one of the Allied agents entertained 
so extensively and elaborately that he became 
known as the propagandist of banquets and was 
said to be conducting a champagne offensive. 
One of the Allied governments was supposed to 
have sent a wealthy couple to Switzerland mainly 
to entertain; and they did it constantly, elabo- 
rately, and well at the Bellevue Palace. I was 
naturally prejudiced against such methods. En- 
tertaining bored me, but I did not want to be 
influenced by my own prejudices, or stubbornly 
to reject means that others foimd useful. I care- 
fully considered it. I questioned the Swiss people 
I had grown to know and the German demo- 
crats. I kept my eyes and ears open. And I 
want to go on record against government enter- 
taining except on special and rare occasions. 

I found that at such functions no one talked 
business, or, if he did, it was not until after 
luncheon or dinner, when some of the men might 
have had too much to eat or drink and were led, 
through good-fellowship, into agreements and 
plans which they were not willing afterward to 



One Thing After Another 167 

keep, and trouble resulted more often than not. 
There were other bad features, too. Snobbish- 
ness could not be kept out. The most valuable 
people who did not have well-cut evening coats 
could not be asked with those who had, and the 
petty gossip which flourished in Switzerland, re- 
sulting so frequently in antagonisms between 
departments of the same country or those of 
Allied countries, undoubtedly often arose from 
the stories which were told and the idle discus- 
sions which took place at these entertainments. 

My opposition to entertaining kept me apart 
and simplified my life. In the months I spent in 
Switzerland I made only one exception. It was 
when the six Swiss journalists, who were going to 
America as guests of the Committee on Public 
Information, met to talk over the details of their 
trip. They were busy men who came from 
Zurich, Basle, Lausanne, and Geneva, and it 
saved time to have them meet at luncheon in 
Berne, where we made out their program and 
discussed only business arrangements. 

Although I escaped the complications which 
entertaining entailed, there were always unfore- 
seen difficulties to keep me busy. One of the 
features of working in Switzerland was that 
whenever you thought everything was finally and 
smoothly settled another difficulty was sure to 
arise. The mission of the six Swiss gentlemen to 
America, which seemed in the beginning so sim- 
ple a thing to arrange, was a typical instance, 



1 68 A Year as a Government Agent 

It was like the "House that Jack Built" — the 
arrangements for it went on and on. They 
seemed never-ending. In fact, it took almost 
three months of daily effort on my part to get 
these gentlemen started, and at the very moment 
of their sailing the trip came within an ace of 
having to be abandoned. 

The choice of the gentlemen was a difficulty in 
itself. President Calonder, as he promised at our 
first interview, had given much time to selecting 
six of the most prominent leaders of opinion in 
Switzerland as the men who would be of greatest 
value to both Switzerland and America on this 
mission. They were considered from every po- 
litical and religious standpoint. The head of the 
Agricultural party, known as the Peasants* 
Christ, the most distinguished professor, the 
most distinguished writer, the leader of the 
majority in the House, the owner of one of the 
most important national newspapers, and 
the leader of Catholic opinion, were finally 
selected. Professor Rappard was to accom- 
pany them. Mr. Sulzer, the Swiss Minister to 
the United States, had then returned to Switzer- 
land on business of importance, and, although he 
was pressed for time and had many delicate and 
complicated questions to settle, he generously 
gave his support to this mission and did every- 
thing in his power to help. He, Professor Rap- 
pard, and I had many conferences. Each man 
who was invited took time to consider the invita- 



One Thing After Another 169 

tion. No one cotild make up his mind to go or 
not to go. We asked them to meetings. We 
begged for decisions. One of them had not had 
a holiday for twenty years, nor had he once 
broken his habit of getting up at four o^clock in 
the morning; he was afraid to try it. Another 
could not go because his wife objected. Another 
found his professional duties kept him in Swit- 
zerland. These explanations began to come on 
the day on which the Germans advertised the 
sinking of the Vaterland (which was never sunk) 
and announced an enormous amount of tonnage 
which they claimed they had recently destroyed 
by submarines. I wondered impatiently if our 
invited guests had been influenced by such re- 
ports ; but I dismissed my suspicions as unworthy 
in view of the character of the men. It was easy 
to understand that the voyage across the ocean 
so simple to us who were used to it must have 
seemed at the least an uncertain and difficult 
undertaking to them. 

After more consultations and delays, it was 
decided that three only of the original six 
who had been asked should go. And then the 
news was broken to me that two of these gentle- 
men, while they wanted to go, did not want to 
accept the invitation as coming from the Com- 
mittee on Public Information, because they 
feared people would think that, having gone as 
guests of a government propaganda department, 
anything they wrote about America on their 



I70 A Year as a Government Agent 

return should be looked upon with suspicion. 
Various ways of avoiding this difficulty were 
suggested : The invitation might come from the 
State Department, or might be issued by Con- 
gress itself, or, whereas it might in reality be 
the invitation of the Committee on Public In- 
formation, it should be given in the name of 
the Carnegie Peace Endowment, or on the 
part of some American university organiza- 
tion. I was considerably ruffled by these pro- 
posals. I explained that I had no authority to 
speak for any department or organization ex- 
cept the one I was representing. I said that it 
was a delicate matter to explain to a department 
of the government that, while it was to bear the 
responsibility of the success of the proposed trip, 
manage all the details, stand all the expenses, 
take all the trouble, its guests did not want to be 
associated with it publicly. You see, reports of 
the attacks in the press and Congress of the 
United States on the Committee on Public In- 
formation had reached Switzerland. In view of 
the complications which arose and of the reluc- 
tance of these gentlemen, I decided to change the 
character of the mission and to send to America, 
instead of the statesmen, representatives of the 
six largest newspapers in Switzerland. Mr. 
Sulzer, helpful as always, wrote to each of the 
papers, explaining the importance of the project. 
It seemed that we had found an easy way out of 
our difficulties. Trained journalists should not 



One Thing After Another 171 

have conscientious scruples of the kind with 
which I had been strugghng on the part of the 
statesmen. Members of the proposed first mis- 
sion vacillated even after they had refused our 
invitations, and it seemed at one time as if there 
would be two Swiss missions ready to start for 
the United States at the same time. But the 
statesmen finally with reluctance abandoned the 
idea of going. We had meetings of the jour- 
nalists to consider what they wanted to see, 
and, although each one wanted to see different 
things, we made a tentative program which I 
cabled and wrote in the greatest detail to 
America. The difficulties of obtaining the pass- 
ports of these gentlemen and having them visaed 
seemiCd at one time almost insurmountable. 
Each man's history and connections were looked 
into through a magnifying-glass. When their 
passports were finally visaed and they were on the 
very eve of leaving Switzerland, an Allied coun- 
try discovered and complained that the brother 
of one of the editors had been a traveling sales- 
man for a Swiss commercial house, and was be- 
lieved to have gone into Germany, or at least 
into Alsace, at one time during the war! And the 
editor himself had made an application for a 
passport to go into Germany the following May. 
This circumstance almost broke up the party. 
Another difficulty arose because another of the 
editors, who was known to be sincerely pro- 
Entente in his sympathies, and who had the 



172 A Year as a Government Agent 

reputation of being one of the most distinguished 
writers in Switzerland, had advocated an early 
and separate peace with Austria without the 
disruption of that country, for fear that further 
disorganization within its boundaries would help 
the spread of Bolshevism. The Italians believed 
him, therefore, to be pro-Austrian and anti- 
Italian, and protested to me against his going to 
America. A solemn committee called upon me. 
They appealed to me on the groimd of the Allies 
standing together against the enemy. When I 
saw no point to their protest and held to my 
plans, they said they would take the matter to 
the American legation. And this I believe they 
did, but without results. The American legation 
had no control over my activities. But there 
were other dangers. The editors themselves hesi- 
tated to cross the ocean. I was asked if I meant 
to insure them. I answered that, since the Ger- 
man submarine campaign had failed and the 
danger was truly negligible, there was no neces- 
sity of insurance. But they foresaw perils and 
insured themselves at enormous premiimis. The 
insurance companies, at least, profited by the 
German propaganda. 

A further difficulty was discovered by Mr. 
Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated 
Press, who was going through Switzerland on a 
sight-seeing tour. Mr. Stone was no friend of the 
Committee on Public Information. He suddenly 
foimd a grave danger in six Swiss gentlemen 



One Thing After Another 173 

.traveling through the United States. About this 
time the German propaganda was giving enor- 
mous pubHcity to President Wilson's speech 
against lynching. Their exaggerated agitation 
made it appear almost as if lynchings of peaceful 
German-bom, of sincere pacifists, even of simple 
neutrals, were daily, hourly, occurrences here in 
America. Perhaps Mr. Melville E. Stone had 
been reached by this German propaganda, but, 
anyway, he went to Professor Rappard with his 
story of the danger not of lynching, of course, 
but of insult to which the Swiss journalists would 
be exposed. War feeling was running high in 
America. Public opinion was inflamed against 
Germans and German speech. Four of our jour- 
nalists were from German Switzerland and spoke 
a dialect which would sound like German to the 
untrained American ear. No one could tell what 
might happen. Everybody became wrought up. 
Again the mission seemed on the point of being 
abandoned. The Swiss journalists themselves 
showed no keenness for being lynched or even 
insulted in America after having been drowned 
in the ocean by submarines. It seemed to me 
the most absurd excitement in the world. Mr. 
Melville E. Stone found a way out of it. He 
thought the delegation would be safe if Professor 
Rappard, who speaks English as well as you and 
I do, should go as a protector. He made this 
suggestion to Professor Rappard and insisted 
upon it. This was a few days before the delega- 



174 -4 Year as a Government Agent 

tion was to start. I had been limited to six, and 
there were six joumaHsts. I had also engaged 
accommodations on the train from Switzerland 
to Paris and from Paris to Bordeaux and steamer 
accommodations to New York all for six only. 
There was almost no way of providing accomm.o- 
dations for an extra traveler. And Professor 
Rappard himself had obligations which would 
prevent his going. I was so firm in my conten- 
tion that the gentlemen would be safe in Amer- 
ica that it was finally decided they should go, 
even without Professor Rappard. 

When everything was settled, I left for Paris 
ahead of the mission. It was m.y first visit there 
since I had opened the office in Switzerland, the 
end of June, and there were many matters for 
me to attend to. The wireless news service 
should be sent more quickly; we needed more 
still photographs; the weekly allotment of news 
films from the American front was not coming as 
we had expected, and there were motion-picture 
experts with whom I should consult. There were 
delays in the diplomatic pouch, which might be 
lessened if the military officer couriers could 
bring the bag for Switzerland from Washington 
to Brest, and if I could establish connections 
from Brest to Switzerland. I wanted fresh nev/s 
stories from the American front. I wanted to 
arrange to send other Swiss journalists on trips 
to the*American front and to see our preparations 
in France. In fact, there were many details 'to 



One Thing After Another 175 

be worked out with various American depart- 
ments in Paris. It was fortunate I went. The 
Swiss journalists could never have gotten off 
without my further efforts. The American pass- 
port office in Berne had believed that it was 
complying with all regulations when it visaed the 
passports through Paris to America, but it 
proved to be necessary, if any traveler remained 
in Paris over one train connection, to have his 
passport re- visaed there. The program of our 
Swiss editors called for a two days' stop. They 
were being entertained at dinner by the Swiss 
legation and the French Maison de la Presse, and 
Ambassador Sharpe was making a speech to 
them at a luncheon at the Crillon. But there were 
difficulties in the way of having their passports 
re- visaed. The American military intelligence 
representatives in Paris said that the American 
military intelligence representatives in Switzer- 
land had not even notified them of the mission, 
and therefore it would be necessary for these 
gentlemen to wait in Paris until communications 
could be received from Switzerland. Some of 
them, too, seemed to be on the military blacklist 
and there was a question as to whether their 
passports would be visaed at all. Our Allies must 
have taken their complaints to Paris when I 
would not listen to them in Berne. The civil 
branch of the American passport office in Paris 
also maintained that some formality had not 
been complied with and that the trip could not 



176 A Year as a Government Agent 

proceed. There was a great deal of red-tape 
about citizens of a neutral country going to 
America. Special permission had to be obtained 
from the State Department in Washington. The 
necessary permission had been cabled to Switzer- 
land, but the authorities in Paris did not know it. 
Any commtinication with Switzerland, even by 
telegram, might take a week, and at best w^ould 
take several days. To catch their steamer the 
journalists must leave Paris for Bordeaux the 
next night! If they missed it their whole care- 
fully planned tour in America would be put out 
of joint and there was no telling when accommo- 
dations for six to cross the ocean could again 
be obtained. The journalists were all busy men 
with important work in Switzerland. Their trip 
had been planned with great exactitude as to 
time, and they were most of them under obliga- 
tion to return within two months. If it was post- 
poned because of some miserable red-tape, it 
would probably have to be abandoned — and 
certainly there would have been no increase of 
good feeling on the part of the Swiss press toward 
the United States. What of all the boasted Amer- 
ican efficiency which was to help win the war? 

Everywhere that day in all the offices I was 
told it could not be done. I grew more deter- 
mined that it should be done. I went to Ambas- 
sador Sharpe's house and enlisted his assistance, 
and the embassy gave its support. But there was 
still the Military Intelligence. Without their 



One Thing After Another 177 

consent the mission could not sail. I determined 
to appeal to General Nolan himself. He was at 
Chaimiont, the American military headquarters. 
Late that night I tried to reach him on the Amer- 
ican military telephone. To do so, I went into 
the office of the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion in the Elysee Palace, which had been taken 
over by the American army forces. Going into 
the Elysee Palace at night was not an easy thing 
to do. Nothing was easy! There again you had 
to have passes and again submit to all sorts of 
red-tape. Mr. Kemey thought my efiort was 
useless, but he kindly consented to help with the 
red-tape details and went with me. We suc- 
ceeded in passing the barriers and the guards. 
We reached his office. We put in our call. The 
answer came almost instantaneously. General 
Nolan was at the front. It was the day after the 
front had moved from St.-Mihiel. But he would 
probably return by twelve o'clock, or some as- 
sistant to whom I could speak would call me 
later. We sat and waited in the office. 

It was while we were there waiting that I 
heard how one of our young soldiers felt in going 
"over the top." He was a boy from the Marines 
who had been wounded at Chateau-Thierry. 
When he was discharged from the hospital he 
was put at light work as a guard in the filysee 
Palace. In going on his rounds he looked in and 
joined us, and while we waited he talked to us. 

He told us how he had been wounded. It had 
12 



178 A Year as a Government Agent 

happened the very first time he went over the 
top. He told us how frightened he had been. He 
said the noise was terrible. His hair stood on 
end. He made a joke about his tin helmet. He 
told us how he had stood there in the trench and 
felt he could not, could not go. But he looked 
up, and there on the top stood his captain. 
''Gee! he stood there all alone. He wasn't 
afraid, and he said, just as calm, but with a 
thrill in his voice: 'Boys, we're going to get the 
Germans, if we go to Berlin! Will you come with 
me?'" They went. Our wounded boy said that 
he forgot for a time to be frightened. Then he 
told us of his brother. He called him "buddy." 
They had grown up together, he said, had en- 
listed together and trained together. They 
jumped out of the trench side by side. He 
stopped in his story. After a minute he told us 
he had never seen a dead person before, and 
there his buddy, his own buddy, whom he had 
never left in all his life, not even for one night, 
was shot dead before his eyes. Oh, his face! 
Again, he said, the noise was terrible and again 
he was frightened, but there was his captain 
leading the way and he went on, following some- 
how until he felt he was stumbling and forgot 
everything. He, too, had been shot. In the 
hospital he had terrible dreams. He dreamed 
and dreamed of his buddy falling there. The 
nurses were good to him. Now that he was out 
of the hospital, he did not want to go back to the 



One Thing After Another 179 

front — he felt he couldn*t. But if he was sent — 
I think he meant to say he would get even with 
the Germans for his brother's death, but the 
telephone rang and off he went on his rounds, and 
I talked over the telephone to a captain in the 
censorship office at Chaumont about the Swiss 
journalists' passports. The captain was very- 
tired and he seemed to me to be making diffi- 
culties. I was insistent. He said, finally, that 
he would see what could be done and would 
notify the Military Intelligence in Paris in the 
morning. Well, my Swiss journalists did get off! 
But, as in a nightmare, when all the difficulties 
seemed to have been arranged, we found at the 
very last minute that their passports had not 
been stamped with the American visas. In the 
confusion, that formality had been forgotten! 
The oversight was rectified in a hurry and they 
caught their train at the last minute; and again 
I returned to Berne. They saw something of our 
great work at Bordeaux, and wrote back ac- 
counts of it to the Swiss papers. They arrived in 
America on schedule time and met only courtesy 
and hospitality from the American public. Mr. 
Melville Stone's alarms had been unfounded. 
They saw our wonders. If the armistice had not 
come before their return to Switzerland, their 
stories and accounts would have had a significant 
place in hurrying the end of the war. 



CHAPTER IX 

SWISS PROBLEMS 

/^NE of the other things, as I have told you, 
^-^ which took me to Paris, was to arrange to 
send other Swiss joumaHsts on trips to see our 
work in France. I knew that if they could see 
for themselves the gigantic scale of American 
operations back of the line in the service of sup- 
plies, the enormous docks, the miles of ware- 
houses, the new railroad system, and all that we 
had constructed in France — if they could go to 
the front and see our activities there, they could 
tell through the medium of the Swiss press such 
facts to the Germans as would go far, also, tow- 
ard bringing the war to an end. My endeavor to 
send these groups was one of the things that 
wasted time and effort. It was recommended and 
planned, indorsed and postponed; one depart- 
ment agreed to it and approved it, another feared 
it and disapproved it. Of course I had no way 
of judging the military dangers of such expedi- 
tions. I could only judge the news value. I have 
told you enough for you to see the atmosphere 
of suspicion and distrust that existed among the 



Swiss Problems i8i 

Allies as regards all those neutrals who were not 
accepted and recognized as Allied sympathizers. 
It was my idea that in choosing people to send 
on such expeditions it was wise to select not those 
already known as Allied sympathizers, but influ- 
ential men of neutral standing, whose reports 
and opinions would carry greater weight in the 
enemy countries, as well as in Switzerland, and 
I believed we could find men of such character 
that they could not easily be spies, ready to be- 
tray a country whose hospitality they accepted. 
But again my view was not the usual one, and 
my plans for these trips to France were finally 
rejected or postponed indefinitely. 

I believe the general distrust of unknown 
neutrals was, on the whole, justified, because of 
the extraordinary manner in which the Germans 
had penetrated into the neutral countries with 
their propaganda. It was they who had set the 
style of masquerading. In Switzerland, of course, 
they masqueraded as Swiss, and when you 
thought you were dealing with the Swiss, it 
might easily turn out that you were dealing with 
German agents. And suppose I should select, 
in the guise of a neutral Swiss, a German agent 
equipped to obtain special information, and in- 
vite him on such a mission as I proposed to send 
to France! I was careful to inquire even then 
what harm he could do, since the mission would 
always be accompanied by American officers. 
He might, it seemed, find ways to communicate 



i82 A Year as a Government Agent 

with other German spies in France. Or picture 
the mission being shown our great preparations 
in an aviation-field. Imagine the German agent 
an. expert in aviation. If he examined our 
machines too closely he might discover our se- 
crets. For instance, said the officer who was dis- 
cussing it with me, if he should stoop down to 
look under the aeroplane, it would be difficult 
to pull him away! It was an alarming thought, 
whether or not aeroplanes carry their secrets 
beneath their wings. 

There were other dangers, too, in Switzerland. 
The partizanship of the Swiss themselves, due to 
historic sympathies, and fed on the one side by 
the enormous and unscrupulous German propa- 
ganda, had become very active. It had grown 
to such a point that, in spite of the natural 
honesty and simplicity of the Swiss character, 
some of the Swiss — even officials of the highest 
rank, who should have been absolutely trust- 
worthy in their neutrality, were ready to give 
secret help to the countries with which they 
sympathized. 

We complained that the secret help was gen- 
erally given to our enemies. It was natural 
enough, perhaps, because the people in the 
greater part of Switzerland, although they speak 
a dialect, read only German and were therefore 
particularly susceptible to German propaganda. 
Germany is their neighbor and intercourse be- 
tween the two countries was direct and close. 



Swiss Problems 183 

Many of the German-Swiss, like the German 
people themselves, had been persuaded of the 
justice of the German cause; they believed that 
Germany was fighting for her existence against 
neighbors who were relentlessly closing in upon 
her. German propaganda told them that Ger- 
many was invincible and that invincible Ger- 
many was their friend. And here was one of 
German propaganda's great triumphs, because 
the Swiss are patriotic, and even those who most 
sympathized with Germany put the interest of 
their own country first. For their own country's 
sake they wanted to show their friendship for 
their great and invincible neighbor in every way 
that did not commit Switzerland itself to an 
active participation in the war. 

On the other hand, western, or French-speak- 
ing, Switzerland had not been blinded by Ger- 
man propaganda. It saw German imperialism 
in its real colors. It was openly pro-Entente. 
It points to its own history and prides itself — 
Geneva in particular — upon its long record of 
liberalism and idealism. Now it saw that the 
Allies were fighting against imperialism for the 
tme ideals of democracy and it openly pro- 
claimed its sympathy. 

But in eastern, or German-speaking, Switzer- 
land, in spite of the inclination toward Germany, 
the situation was not clear-cut. The German- 
speaking Swiss were not by any means all dupes 
of German propaganda. 



1 84 A Year as a Government Agent 

Switzerland as a unit is proud of her demo- 
cratic form of government, and jealous of her 
own independence and of her recognized neu- 
trality. She would have fought as a unit against 
an attempt on the part of any belligerent to 
invade her territory, and many of the German- 
Swiss realized from the beginning that it was 
only by a happy chance that Belgium, instead 
of their own country, had been invaded. I was 
told that the suspense in Switzerland of those 
early days was almost overwhelming. When the 
way through Belgium was chosen the relief was 
enormous. But the immediate popular reac- 
tion, strangely enough, was a feeling more like 
gratitude to Germany for sparing Switzerland 
than resentment at her crime against another 
small nation. An uneasy fear remained, how- 
ever, that, as long as Germany was an autocratic 
military power, Switzerland's safety was not 
assured. 

In the commercial field also Germany's care- 
fully prepared campaign of peacefiil penetration 
aroused doubt and fear. It was not carried out 
in a spirit of propitiation. The extent alone of 
her preparations caused alarm. What would 
happen to Switzerland's own chance of develop- 
ing economically if she were swamped by Ger- 
man activities within her borders? When a 
German commercial house was established in 
Switzerland it did^not give employment, I was 
told, to Swiss people, but brought with it its own 



Swiss Problems 185 

employees. All of its orders, too, were given 
to German merchants; for instance, a German 
firm in Switzerland would send across the fron- 
tier into Germany even for such little things as 
its printed letterheads, rather than order them 
from the Swiss stationer next door. 

We heard that Germany drove hard bargains, 
too, with the Swiss government. The enormous 
prices which she extorted for all the necessities 
she sold to Switzerland aroused a popular resent- 
ment. 

These situations naturally lessened in Switzer- 
land the influence which was due to historic 
association and which had been so carefully built 
up by German propaganda. And it was not 
surprising that, side by side with the friendship 
and admiration of the German-Swiss for Ger- 
many, grew a fear of her military autocracy and 
her commercial methods, and that an increas- 
ing number of men in German Switzerland began 
to see clearly that Switzerland's future safety, 
political and commercial, depended upon the vic- 
tory of the Allies, and that such a victory was 
worth to Switzerland a prolonged struggle with 
all the suffering it entailed upon her. But a 
large proportion of the German-Swiss, still 
swayed by their natural sympathies and still 
blinded by the enormous German propaganda, 
wanted the war to end promptly and with a 
German victory. This difference among the 
German-Swiss themselves probably sharpened 



1 86 A Year as a Government Agent 

the partizanship of the faction which sympa- 
thized with Germany. 

The differences of sympathies and interests 
naturally brought about conflicts in every na- 
tional group in Switzerland and in many depart- 
ments of the government, which resulted in diffi- 
culties and even in scandals. The situation in 
Switzerland's highest governing body — the Fed- 
eral Coimcil of Seven — could be taken as typical. 
The Councilors were supposed by the foreign 
representatives in Switzerland to be divided in 
sympathy more or less according to their lan- 
guage and traditions. The head of the Eco- 
nomic Department was a German-Swiss who 
was held by the Allied representatives to be a 
strong German partizan. The head of the De- 
partment of Justice, I was told, was bom in 
Germany and had become a naturalized Swiss; 
he, too, was looked upon as actively pro-German. 
A third Federal Councilor, a German-Swiss, also, 
had the year before been sent to Berlin as the 
Swiss diplomatic representative, because of his 
known sympathy with Germany. The four 
other Councilors, more consistent in their stand 
as officials of a democratic country, were held 
by the Allied representatives to be strictly neu- 
tral and impartial. The representatives of the 
Central Powers, used to demanding favors, may 
have taken a different view. The departments 
under the pro-German Councilors were felt, from 
our standpoint, to be partial at times to the 



Swiss Problems 187 

Germans in their administration of affairs. Oc- 
casionally evidence of such partiality would ap- 
pear. The Councilor at the head of the Eco- 
nomic Department, at the time that a severe 
print-paper restriction was put into force, wrote 
to the editors of a German propaganda organ 
in Switzerland, agreeing that they need not 
comply with the full requirements of the law. 
His letter was discovered and was published in 
a French-Swiss paper. No one in America can 
imagine the bitter struggle of every publication 
in Switzerland to obtain the last possible ounce 
of print-paper. And here was a Federal Coimcilor 
caught in the act of favoring a German propa- 
ganda paper. What an excitement there was! 
What stormy interviews there must have been 
among the Seven! How the neutral faction 
must have frowned upon the careless pro-Ger- 
man member! But they, as the Federal Coim- 
cil, stood together and issued an explanatory 
statement. I remember thinking how weak a 
statement it was, and wondering that the other 
Coimcilors should have stood by the culprit. 
This, of course, was an insignificant matter, but 
there were other difficulties which were inter- 
national in scope. Most of them were hushed 
up so successfully that only the vaguest accounts 
reached the public. The echoes which I heard of 
some of these conflicts, such as the Hoffman and 
the Grimm incidents, were too confused to 
repeat. 



1 88 A Year as a Government Agent 

One of the more notorious was one in which 
members of the Swiss General Staff had been 
impHcated. The head of the General Staff, 
General Wille, was a German-Swiss of pure 
Prussian descent and was married to a mem- 
ber of a distinguished German family. It was 
common gossip that he and the General Staff 
as a whole were strongly pro-German, that 
they studied and admired the German niilitary 
system and believed that Germany could not 
fail to win the war. 

This story was first told to me by two young 
British diplomats at dinner one summer's even- 
ing on the terrace of the Bellevue-Palace Hotel. 
That evening the General Staff sat near us, but 
were screened off by a barricade of plants and 
palms. From behind their green screen we 
could hear their guttural dialect and their gruff 
voices clearly, and could see them distinctly. 
They had come on to the terrace wearing the 
only uniforms in that neutral meeting-place, 
their spurs clanking, and every one had turned to 
watch them. I knew that they lived in the hotel, 
and, although each evening after dinner they 
gathered about a bridge-table in the big red 
room, I had never before seen them in the restau- 
rant. I had half unconsciously wondered why it 
was. And now, why did they sit behind a screen, 
I asked. It seemed so strange. I was told that 
they always dined in a private room and that on 
warm evenings the screen at the end of the ter- 



Swiss Problems 189 

race was substituted for the more substantial 
walls. This habit of theirs dated, it appeared, 
from the early days of the war, from the time of 
the imperialistic Russian regime, before the 
United States had seen its way to take up arms 
for democracy. 

How often Switzerland, with its spies and its 
diplomats and its make-believes, was like a comic 
opera! That evening especially it seemed so to 
me, as we sat and gossiped on the flower-bordered 
terrace, and looked over the shining Aar River 
on to the Bernese Alps, still bright with the last 
touch of the Alpine glow. There was the back- 
ground of the deep-blue sky which might have 
been stolen from a Russian ballet and fitted into 
the scene. A Spanish adventuress sat at the very 
next table to us ; so pretty and gay, with her long 
earrings and her new flirtation. Her husband — • 
poor yoting man! — had been madly in love with 
her, I was told, madly enough to marry her. Now 
he had been sent into Germany on a mission — 
secret, of course — ^which was arousing the curi- 
osity of otir Allied diplomats. And she was 
flirting again! Her sordid story was whispered 
to me between details of the Swiss affair. 
This latter story, too, was bad enough, as the 
two young Englishmen outlined it that evening — ■ 
our elbows on the table, our three heads close 
together. It was that the confidential coded mes- 
sages sent by the Russian legation in Switzerland 
to its government in Petrograd had been inter- 



I go A Year as a Government Agent 

cepted and the secret code deciphered by offi- 
cers of the Swiss General Staff and the informa- 
tion thus gained had been given to the German 
government. No wonder diplomatic codes in 
Switzerland were afterward guarded zealously! 
One of the young British diplomats, very correct 
and very literal, commented with wonder upon 
the length of time which the Swiss officers had 
given to the task of deciphering. He went back 
to this point over and over again without a smile. 
It had taken eight or nine weeks, he said, sol- 
emnly, and the Swiss officers had done nothing 
in all those weeks (such was their devotion to the 
German cause) but work studiously over the 
code; no interruptions of golf or tennis, I sup- 
pose! There was resentment and bitterness in 
his tone toward the Swiss. But surely these 
traitors were tried and punished? I asked. Of 
course they were tried, and punished, too; but 
here was a reason for the bitterness — the punish- 
ment, it seems, in no way fitted the crime. To 
us Allies the crime was of the blackest; it was 
deliberate betrayal by members of the supreme 
military authority of a friendly nation. But to 
the brother officers of the betrayers the attempt 
to help a friend, so admired and powerful and so 
sure to win as Germany was, had seemed, per- 
haps, not quite so bad. In fact it was based 
upon what the guilty officers believed to be 
patriotism. It proved not to be an isolated in- 
cident. It was part of a bargain to give infor- 



Swiss Problems 191 

mation to the German General Staff in return 
for which certain military advantages were as- 
sured to Switzerland. The Allied representa- 
tives saw no excuse, but rather more offense in 
such an arrangement, and after this incident 
feeling ran high in the dining-room of the Belle- 
vue. In that meeting-place of enemy represent- 
atives responsibility for this affair and for its in- 
adequate punishment seemed to be attached to 
the General Staff itself, even after the dismissal 
of the members who had been found guilty. As 
the Swiss officers went in and out to meals, the 
grateful German military attaches would spring 
from their tables and click their heels and salute. 
The Allied officers, I gathered, did not spring to 
their feet, and their salutes grew colder. The 
situation became so tense that it was deemed 
wise and tactful for the Swiss General Staff to 
retreat from that battle-field and lunch and dine 
in a private room. 

This incident had an especial interest for me, 
because of Colonel Egli, the ranking officer of 
those who had been concerned and punished. 
Colonel Egli did not seem to suffer greatly in 
public esteem. He retained his military title 
even if he lost his distingmshed post on the 
General Staff. In Switzerland he was an ac- 
knowledged authority on military affairs and 
became the military critic of one of the big 
German-Swiss newspapers — the Easier Nach- 
richterif where I foimd him a powerful antago- 



192 A Year as a Government Agent 

nist. He was outspokenly and unashamedly pro- 
German. He visited the German front and pro- 
claimed the infallibility of the German army. In 
the colimms of the newspaper, he fought and 
denied each inch gained by the Allies. He fiercely 
and emphatically won false German victories; 
he cleverly and astutely combated everything 
that was claimed for American arms and as- 
sistance. 

The Easier Nachrichten is an influential paper, 
and I remember calling it '' an outrage "that Colo- 
nel Egli should hold so powerful a place upon 
it. I went several times to see the kindly owner 
and editor-in-chief of this paper. I met his 
daughters, was welcomed into his house, and 
treated in the raost friendly way. He listened 
with patience when I objected to Colonel Egli 
and his methods, but warmly defended his char- 
acter as a man and his ability as a critic. There 
is an inflexible strain of loyalty in the character 
of the German-Swiss, which leads them to hold 
to friends, right or wrong, and to be faithful to 
old associations; and to that quality, I believe, 
was due the facts that Colonel Egli flourished to 
the day of the armistice his German victories on 
the front page of the Easier Nachrichten, and 
that General Wille to the end remained supreme 
on the General Staff. 

Poor Switzerland! Although the public and 
some of her government departments may have 
seemed to us to pass too lightly over such mat- 



Swiss Problems 193 

ters as this affair, the most acute situations and 
the bitterest strife must have resulted from them 
in the Federal Coimcil and in the other depart- 
ments of the government. The moderates must 
have been arrayed against the partizans. They 
must have been reproachful that Switzerland's 
own honor as a neutral was not the supreme 
interest with every Swiss official. But we can 
only guess at what happened behind the scenes, 
because the Swiss government never failed to 
present a united front to the outside world, and 
to come through every such crisis with appar- 
ently unshaken loyalty to each other. And, on 
the whole, they succeeded in maintaining a sur- 
prisingly just neutrality. I wonder what other 
country could have done so well with such per- 
plexing problems both human and political. 

The question of neutrality was always an 
acute and complicated one in Switzerland. Her 
own partizans were not the only ones to keep in 
order. The representatives of the conflicting 
Powers were ready to fly at one another's throats 
in the press and in pamphlets, and were held in 
check only by the severity of the Swiss neutral- 
ity laws. Suppose Switzerland had been caught 
napping for a moment and one Power had gained 
a point over the other! There was the govern- 
ment of the injured party ready with a protest. 
And Switzerland must keep on friendly terms 
with all the governments, because she needed 

help of some sort from each one of them. 
13 



194 A Year as a Government Agent 

To this trying situation was added a little 
group, without diplomatic protection and of no 
particular international standing, whose activi- 
ties gave unceasing trouble to Switzerland 
throughout the war. They were the German lib- 
erals, democrats, republicans, socialists: men 
who had left Germany before or during the war 
because they hated German autocracy and 
wanted, through criticism and exposure, to over- 
turn the Prussian government and to establish 
democratic principles in their own country. Most 
of them believed that Germany's regeneration 
was dependent upon her military defeat and were 
keen supporters of an Allied victory. Naturally, 
they were hated by the German diplomats and 
official representatives in Switzerland, who tried 
in every way to render their efforts ineffective. 

Some of them established a paper — the Freie 
Zeitung, which followed the usual fashion in 
Switzerland of masquerading and was ostensibly 
a Swiss paper, conducted by Swiss editors. But, 
as usual, no one was deceived, least of all the 
German legation or the Swiss government. The 
chief objects of the paper were to reveal the guilt 
of the German government in bringing on the 
war and to expose its crimes in conducting it ; and 
this it did unceasingly, bitterly, and effectively. 

The German government, through the German 
legation in Switzerland, wanted the Freie Zeitung 
suppressed. A paragraph published in one of 
the Swiss papers quoted a prominent German 



Swiss Problems 195 

legation secretary as saying that its suppression 
would be the equivalent for Germany of a mili- 
tary victory. The paragraph further explained 
that the newspapers in Germany also attached a 
great importance to its disappearance. At first 
glance it would seem an easy thing for the power- 
ful German legation to obtain from the Swiss 
government such a concession as the suppression 
of an unprotected paper, which, by its attacks 
upon a government friendly to Switzerland, con- 
stantly laid itself open to action as violating 
Swiss neutrality. But, although the Freie Zei- 
tung had no diplomatic protection, itihad friends. 
At that time it was well thought of in America. 
The ''Friends of German Democracy" in the 
United States, a society formed mostly of the 
descendants of the men who had fought for de- 
mocracy in Germany in 1848, subscribed to it 
and circulated it among the German-Americans 
here. It was known in other countries, too, espe- 
cially in France, because the foreign papers 
quoted frequently from this valiant little sheet. 
If the Swiss government had yielded to German 
pressure and had suppressed it, the whole demo- 
cratic world would have wondered why a re- 
public like Switzerland should suppress a Swiss 
paper — it was ostensibly Swiss, you remember — 
because it advocated, against an autocratic class, 
the very principles of government upon which 
the Swiss Republic itself was founded. The sup- 
pression of the Freie Zeitung imder such condi- 



196 A Year as a Government Agent 

tions undoubtedly would have caused unfavor- 
able comment in the press of the Allied countries, 
and popular opinion in those countries, ignorant 
of the neutrality problems of Switzerland, might 
have been aroused against her. She could not 
afford to take such a chance, even at the request 
of the German legation, because she was de- 
pendent upon the United States for grain and 
upon France for a port at which to land the grain 
and for transportation of the grain across its 
territory. Protected by this situation, the Freie 
Zeitung went far. 

But Switzerland was not dependent on the 
Allies only. Rumor said that in the coal bargain 
which she had been forced to make with Ger- 
many in June, 191 8, the latter country had ex- 
acted, in addition to a very high price in money, 
that ''moral support" also should be given her. 
This moral support was supposed to mean the 
expulsion from Switzerland of some of the lead- 
ers of the German democratic movement and the 
suppression of the Freie Zeitung. The determina- 
tion to suppress it was evident. If it was not 
practical to give its attacks upon the German 
government as the reason for its suppression, 
then some other pretext must be found. There 
was a great deal of talk, and even published com- 
ment, as to how this object was to be attained, 
and, as usual in Switzerland, the steps which 
were being discussed in the greatest secrecy were 
known to every one. 



Swiss Problems 197 

One thing after another was said to be irnder 
consideration. One means was to take advantage 
of the real shortage of the paper-supply and 
order the suppression of all papers which had 
been founded in Switzerland since the beginning 
of the war. Under this order the Freie Zeitung 
would disappear, but the Germans themselves 
would lose three small propaganda sheets. Such 
an arrangement would seem impartial to the 
Allied countries, and the Germans would not be 
seriously hurt by it, because they controlled so 
many long-established Swiss papers that their 
three small propaganda sheets would be an in 
significant price to pay for getting rid of so bitter 
and damaging an enemy. Perhaps the Germans 
hesitated to pay even this price, because another 
pretext was found which spared them entirely. 
The Freie Zeitung was charged officially with 
having overconsumed its allowance of paper. 
The Freie Zeitung was daring, and the charge 
was probably well grounded. It was assumed 
that suppression would be the punishment. 
The German legation was about to triumph! 
The French papers published a story, showing 
that the suppression was to be effected be- 
cause of political reasons and at the request of 
Germany, and that the ostensible reason was a 
mere pretext. The French-Swiss papers quoted 
from the French press, and an agitation blazed 
forth. Of course I did not want the Freie Zeitung 
suppressed and the Germans to triumph. I 



198 A Year as a Government Agent 

called upon friends in the Swiss government for 
help. They saw that if this incident was given 
publicity in America it might make an unfortu- 
nate effect here; it might, in fact, arouse an an- 
tagonism against Switzerland out of proportion 
to the importance of the paper. They took up 
the question with other officials and I was as- 
sured that the whole matter had been exag- 
gerated; that the Freie Zeitung was not to be 
suppressed and nothing further than a fine was 
contemplated, and that a continuance of the 
former supply of paper would be allowed. 

But the question was reopened and finally the 
allowance of paper which had been assured to 
the Freie Zeitung was greatly cut down. Its 
subscribers' list consequently had to be reduced 
and some of its numbers omitted. It was crip- 
pled, but its enemies were not satisfied. They 
wanted its entire suppression; balked in one di- 
rection, another way must be found. Soon an 
accusation was brought that its list of subscrib- 
ers was fraudulent. But this accusation, too, 
after interviews and agitations, failed of its end. 
The paper went on, but not in peace. Time 
passed, Germany capitulated and the armistice 
was signed. But the personnel of the German 
legation in Switzerland remained for a time the 
same, and their efforts were not to be tamely 
abandoned. Like a thunderbolt there came an 
order for the expulsion from Switzerland of one 
of the most prominent contributors to the Freie 



Swiss Problems 199 

Zeitmig, Doctor Rosemeyer. The reason assigned 
was an article which he had written the previous 
June, attacking the Prussian government and its 
rulers — especially the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, 
Ludendorff, and Hindenburg. Even the German 
people, he held, were guilty for their support of 
the war. The article had been written for a 
French paper and published in France and was 
never meant to appear in Switzerland. One of 
the German propaganda organs in Switzerland 
got hold of it, reprinted it, and agitated about it. 
Doctor Rosemeyer was charged with the crime 
of violating Swiss neutrality, by having taken 
advantage of his residence on Swiss soil to con- 
duct a campaign in one belligerent country, 
France, against another, Germany. This one 
article was held to constitute a campaign. The 
article was undoubtedly virulent. But if it had 
been published in America at that time it would 
have seemed to us plain truth-telling and its 
author a man of impartial insight. Was a coun- 
try friendly to us to expel him and make him a 
martyr after the war was over? It seemed to me 
inexpedient as well as unjust. The government 
he attacked was no longer in existence ; its rulers 
had fled, its defeated people themselves had 
turned against the rulers he had condemned. 
In the general break-up, his article, nov/ months 
old, could add no further injury to any one. His 
expulsion by Switzerland would have seemed 
partial to the old Prussian regime. I protested 



200 A Year as a Government Agent 

against it to a high Swiss official, and I urged that 
it was an inappropriate moment to run the risk 
of stirring up prejudice against Switzerland in 
the United States and in the other victorious 
countries for a matter that had lost its bearing 
on the present situation. I argued that from 
slighter reasons than this a *' cause celebre** might 
spring. The Swiss official maintained that the 
proposed expulsion was just, and he advanced 
another reason for it. He said, "The German 
government and its rulers have been our friends, 
and, now that they are defeated and attacked on 
all sides, we should stand by them more loyally 
than ever." The idea of loyalty strongly appeals 
to the German-Swiss. It has become a tradition 
with them. The official, when he said this, seemed 
to be a little absurd — ^but very lovable ! At least 
here was idealism — questionable as to its sound- 
ness, as it was — struggling against expediency in a 
government. But finally, in spite of Swiss loyalty, 
the order expelling Doctor Rosemeyer was with- 
drawn, and the troubles of the Freie Zeitung, as 
far as I know, came more or less to an end. 



CHAPTER X 

THE APPROACHING END 

T HAD supposed that, with the armistice and 
^ the collapse of the Prussian autocratic govern- 
ment, the German exiles would return at once 
to their country. But as long as the former min- 
ister continued in charge of the German legation 
in Berne, it was not an easy thing for them to do. 
Naturally, they were not in favor with the old 
authorities, and many of them from the begin- 
ning were opposed to the new government in 
spite of all the changes. They saw it pass into 
the hands of men whose loyalty to the demo- 
cratic cause they suspected, or of men too far on 
the radical side. When they asked for their 
passports, many reasons could be alleged for 
refusing them; for instance, some of them had 
evaded military service on leaving Germany. 
Those who were socialists did return, assisted by 
their party leaders in Berlin. Those who called 
themselves republicans or democrats remained 
in Switzerland because, when they could not 
obtain their passports from the legation, they 
had no powerful party leaders at home to whom 



202 A Year as a Government Agent 

they could appeal. There they remained, still 
protesting against the government in Germany, 
still men without a country. 

Of course, they did not escape gossip, official 
or semi-official; nobody in Switzerland did! 
Much of it may have come originally from mem- 
bers of the German official circles, prompted by 
their keen desire to discredit these men. It may 
have drifted through neutral officials to our own^ 
diplomats. But in the form in which it was re- 
peated by our diplomats it was not kind, and it 
showed an incomplete understanding of the im- 
pulses and reasons that prompt human action. 
Perhaps it could not be otherwise with men 
whose lives have always fallen in soft and easy 
social places. What did they in their protected 
and distinguished careers know of the trials of 
men who have determined upon exile; or of the 
courage that is required to face disgrace and 
poverty and the contempt of relations and friends 
who are to be left behind ; or of all the strife and 
bitterness that may have preceded a decision to 
turn against one's country in a time of war? 
The diplomats did not hesitate to say of the 
exiles who were of military age that they had 
left Germany because they were cowards and 
afraid to fight, of others that they were ''disap- 
pointed," having failed in some ambition. There 
was a pett}/ , ready-made reason for each man's 
exile. One, it was said, had left in anger and 
spite because he had applied to Krupp's factory 



The Approaching End 203 

for an important position and had been refused. 
Three others, forced into exile because of their 
writings, had made a dramatic and dangerous 
escape from Germany; they had done so, it was 
explained, because they had failed to be given 
commissions in the German army. Another left 
because he wanted a Cabinet position which was 
given to a rival. I remember saying to one of our 
diplomats, in reference to the man who was 
supposed to have applied to Krupp's, that I did 
not believe the story. The diplomat objected in 
wonder. ''Why else should he have left?" he 
asked. *' There seems to be no other reason ; there 
is nothing else against him." The kindest thing 
said of these exiles was that they were unbal- 
anced and erratic. By conventional standards, 
undoubtedly it was true. The perfectly balanced 
German would have stayed at home, fought, 
acted, and thought as the great majority of 
Germans did. These exiles were, I believe, ideal- 
ists who had made a heroic choice of leaving 
their own country and its accustomed ways, and 
of deciding in the heat of war between two ideals 
— the one of patriotism and the other of democ- 
racy. Their choice did not mean wounds, muti- 
lation, or death. They won no laurels on the 
battle-fields, and they wore no medals, but I 
believe they were heroes all the same. Their 
heroism was the more difficult because it received 
no general recognition. There was nothing about 
them — wounds or medals — to indicate virtue of 



204 A Year as a Government Agent 

any kind, which wotild bring them the respect 
and admiration of the strangers among whom 
they were going. They were merely subject to 
unkind gossip and misunderstanding. Un- 
doubtedly, too, what heroism they did possess 
was not a steady and consistent thing. They 
probably rebelled at times against the conse- 
quences of their great decision. How full of hu- 
man frailties they were ! Some of them were vain 
and wanted praise. They were irritable enough 
to quarrel over trifles with one another. They 
were petty enough to suspect one another un- 
worthily. One may have been unduly interested 
in making his pamphlets against Germany pay, 
another may have thought too much of his health 
and have sat wrapped in shawls, shivering by an 
electric heater, rather than face the difficulties 
and dangers of going back without a passport to 
a disturbed coimtry. Another may have hoped 
to gain a supremacy that would bring him a 
great political reward after the triumph of de- 
mocracy in Germany. In fact, they all probably 
were swayed by a mixture of motives — some 
heroic and some material. There was not one 
great leader among them. Not one of them big 
or simple enough to bring the others together 
and with them lead their country through its 
hour of crisis to the democracy of which they 
all dreamed and for which they all had sacri- 
ficed. It would have needed a superman, per- 
haps, because there never was so incongruous a 



The Approaching End 205 

group. Only in exile could they have been 
drawn together even momentarily. There were 
business men, poets, Jews, Gentiles, young and 
old, representing the widest range of traditions, 
of class, and of character. I would wonder that 
one was so gentle and incompetent, a typical 
idealist, a little shabby and underfed, another so 
alert and grasping, bitterly fearful of further 
poverty. Except for their ideals of democracy, 
the one thing they had in common was education. 
They nearly all had a university title of Doctor 
or Professor. 

Some of them I never saw; some 1 knew well. 
There were several whom I saw occasionally, 
when they brought their pamphlets to me or 
when I wanted their help in translations. These 
I knew chiefly through their writing and was 
grateful to them because of their bitterness 
against the German military caste. 

One of those I never saw was a former member 
of the Reichstag, now an old man, a Jew who 
had been a lawyer and a great orator. He had 
written the pamphlet called T accuse, which was 
so bitter an arraignment of the German govern- 
ment that he had not only to live in exile, but 
even in neutral Switzerland he was forced to re- 
main in disguise to escape expulsion. His true 
name was never mentioned, and he was always 
referred to in whispers merely as "the author of 
T accused He had been rich, we heard, but his 
fortune had been confiscated, and aow in his old 



2o6 A Year as a Governmejit Agent 

age he was constantly worried about the future. 
How could he provide for his daughters? If he 
could go to America he felt that here he would 
be able to put his gift of oratory to use for the 
cause of democracy and find a way to earn his 
living. But permission for him to come here 
could not be obtained. 

Another one of those I never saw was Doctor 
Rosemeyer, the man over whose ordered expul- 
sion from Switzerland I had been so agitated. I 
did not seek his acquaintance, because I was al- 
ways very busy, and, although every one agreed 
that he was a powerful writer and a very learned 
man, it seemed that from his vast fund of learn- 
ing there came a stream of talk, instructive and 
interesting, but interminable. 

Professor Nippold I saw only once. He came 
to call upon me one day after his approaching 
visit had been announced ceremoniously through 
the legation. He arrived in the midst of the 
busiest part of my day. The long table in the 
middle of my office where I sat was littered with 
clippings, with translations, and with articles — 
with every sort of thing awaiting my attention. 
I did not want to take time to talk, but I could 
not send him away, for he had come from Thun 
on a slow Swiss train especially to see me. In 
he came, a little gentleman of the old school, 
unmistakably a professor, very correct, in a 
frock-coat, holding his hat and his gloves in his 
hand. My office was scantily furnished. There 



The Approaching End 207 

was one small chair, which, like my table, was 
littered with papers. He couldn't sit there. 
There was a big armchair meant for distin- 
guished visitors such as he, but Sonny was sit- 
ting in it. I turned him out hastily. I was 
abashed to find it covered with white hairs. I 
hoped Professor Nippold wouldn't notice them — 
he looked so neat. I brushed it hurriedly with a 
flip or two of my hand, and invited him to take 
it. He carefully drew apart the tails of his im- 
maculate, old-fashioned frock-coat and sat on 
the very edge, erect and uneasy, but with an air 
of leisureliness and of ceremony, while Sonny sat 
at my feet and looked at him disapprovingly. 
We discussed a proposed international librar^^ in 
Zurich, which had caused much strife and many 
heartburnings among the circle of Swiss pro- 
fessors. We hoped support for it might be ob- 
tained from the Carnegie Peace Endowment. 
Other matters of a like sort we talked over, and 
then he left. I did not know, or I've forgotten, 
his story. I think he had lived in Switzerland 
before the war began. The reason I remicmber 
him so distinctly is that, while he talked, I pict- 
ured him with his ceremonious old-fashioned 
courtesy, correct and unbending, beside the 
other German exiles, and especially beside one 
about whom I had been told the very evening 
before — a poet, with black hair brushed away 
from his face, with wild black eyes and all the 
fire of an untamed nature in his manner! 



2o8 A Year as a Government Agent 

There was Henry Ball, high-shouldered, with 
his dark hair cut in a bang, his sleeves always too 
short, who looked to me like a little German boy 
grown up from out of my Grimm's Fairy Tales. 
He should have worn a wide, turn-down collar. 
He was supposed to be the business man of the 
group. He had been, it seems, a theatrical man- 
ager. When he left Germany he, assisted by a 
young woman who had been a ballet dancer, 
opened a cabaret in Zurich which soon became 
known as a meeting-place of German Democrats 
and was closed by the Zurich police. 

Dr. Hans Schlieben, the real editor of the 
Freie Zeitung, of whom I saw most, and to whom 
I went with many inquiries and many perplexi- 
ties, had been for years in the German Consular 
Service and the Foreign Office. His point of view 
was clear and definite; his attitude against the 
German government was parti zan in the ex- 
treme, and at times he lost patience with the 
other exiles who were not prepared to go to ex- 
cessive lengths. He was very adroit in guiding 
the Freie Zeitung through all its perils. He had 
a sly sense of hiimor that, in the midst of the 
greatest difficulties and the bitterest discourage- 
ments, made him smile over the pectdiarities of 
his compatriots, and over his own as well. He 
would put into the most solemn and ponderous of 
sentences a quaint word or phrase that would 
give me a shock of surprise and force a sudden 
smile from me, even when I was most serious and 



The Approaching End 209 

hurried. It was to him that fell the labor of 
trying to bring together the German exiles for 
some common plan in support of their common 
ideals. He worked at it unceasingly and unsuc- 
cessfully. He was my earliest friend among this 
group. 

On my first arrival in Switzerland I bought a 
Freie Zeitung at a news-stand. Its name was 
familiar to me because I had been told of it in 
America. I went to call on its editors because 
it seemed to me I would find men here who be- 
lieved as we did. My action shocked the diplo- 
mats. Any connection with the German demo- 
crats, I was told, must be carried on in secret. 
So important was this secrecy that Doctor 
Schlieben must be known and always spoken of 
by an assumed name. Especial precautions 
should be taken over the telephone. Was it, I 
wondered, because these men technically were 
considered enemies, and an American would 
compromise himself by knowing them? What 
nonsense it seemed to me. 

But another reason was given for caution. I 
was warned that there would be grave danger to 
the German democrats themselves if they were 
known to be acquainted with me. Their whole 
cause would be discredited, it seemed. It would 
lead all the world to suspect that the Freie 
Zeitung was being subsidized. And the German 
democrats were fiercely independent and right- 
fully proud of the independence of their paper. 
14 



2IO A Year as a Government Agent 

I thought Doctor Schlieben himself would be the 
best judge of the situation, so I talked it over 
with him. He was sure it would be an advantage 
rather than a danger to have it known that there 
were Americans who took an interest in the Freie 
Zeitung. In the end this proved to be true, as 
you have seen. But how the storm raged in these 
early days of my struggle with the diplomats! 
One day I walked with Doctor Schlieben openly 
on the streets of Berne. I took tea with him and 
his wife in a little cafe. The diplomats heard of 
it. I was told that it seemed to them incontro- 
vertible proof of my lack of discretion and of 
the danger that would result from my remaining 
in Switzerland. 

Of all the German democrats, the most pictu- 
resque was Doctor Muehlon, a former director of 
the great Krupp munition-factory and a very 
wealthy member of Germany's- autocratic circle. 
He is tall and blond, distinguished-looking and 
still young, with a manner that arouses and 
holds one's interest. Some of the other German 
exiles complained that he was unstable. Perhaps 
it is inevitable that a raan who could be so 
warmed by enthusiasm and so chilled by despair 
as he should seem imstable to men of colder and 
more practical natures. The most surprising 
thing to rne about Doctor Muehlon was that he 
should ever have been a director of the Krupp 
factory, because such an office would call for all 
the business-like qualities which it was com- 



The Approaching End 211 

plained that he lacked. No one could deny that 
he had courage and idealism. When he had 
become convinced of Germany's guilt in the war 
he withdrew from the Krupp organization and 
from participation in the government. He broke 
away from all his old associations. And what 
power they can have over such a man! He suf- 
fered. He despaired over it. He wrote and 
published a pamphlet revealing what he knew 
and denoimcing his country before the world. 
It was a tragic step for him and it meant, of 
course, his exile. When I knew him he was living 
in the deepest seclusion with his wife and little 
blond children, a few miles from Berne in a de- 
lightful old Swiss country house with shady ter- 
races and a courtyard inclosed by frescoed walls. 
There he saw a few visitors from time to time, 
but so great was his shame at his country's guilt 
that he said imtil she had recognized and ex- 
piated it he could not face the world and he 
would never leave his refuge; he would live on 
his own land as a hermit. There, when I went to 
see him, he talked of all the problems of the war, 
of social developments in the past and of the 
hopes of the future. Later, when the armistice 
had been signed and Germany had begun to 
expiate her crimes, he went back to his country. 
He foimd in the stormy period of readjustment 
much that he could not support, but he saw, too, 
suffering and privation on all sides. He was 
touched to the heart by the plight of the_ little 



212 A Year as a Government Agent 

children there, ninety per cent, of whom he found 
were affected in some way by famine conditions, 
with an appalling death-rate among those 
in the crowded public institutions. He brought 
to me a very touching appeal he had written on 
their behalf to the children of America to come 
to their relief. Couldn't such a campaign, he 
wondered, be instituted here in America? No 
one could want little children, even little German 
children, to suffer. They, at least, were not guilty 
of the war, and they were bearing the brunt of 
the pimishment there. Such an appeal, if lis- 
tened to now, he thought, would serve a double 
purpose and do away in the next generation with 
the bitterness which war engenders. Perhaps 
it would have, but our countries were still at 
war. Hatred was active here and suspicion was 
on the alert. There might be seen in the appeal, 
written from so tender and disinterested a mo- 
tive, a propaganda effort of some kind. I passed 
it on to a representative of the Food Administra- 
tion and I do not know what became of it. 

I wondered if there was ever a more interesting 
man than Doctor Muehlon, or one whose ro- 
mantic situation fitted so well his attractive and 
vivid personality. You could understand that 
he in his fastidious exile held somewhat aloof 
from the other German democrats. How could 
they all have worked together without a leader — 
these individualists, who had rebelled singly 
against their country's outrages? 



The Approaching End 213 

During all the war the German exiles kept up 
their connections with the people of their own 
political belief in Germany, who had not had 
the courage to declare their position openly, 
and, therefore, were able to remain at home. 
These latter came now and then to Switzerland 
and held secret interviews with their more coura- 
geous friends who had gone into exile. In this 
way we heard a great many rumors about con- 
ditions in Germany, although the Germans 
themselves in Germany were kept in ignorance 
of much that was taking place about them by the 
severity of the censorship. They before long 
realized this, of course, and were so greedy for 
news that uncensored pamphlets and papers 
which reached them secretly in spite of the cen- 
sorship went, it was said, from hand to hand 
and were read into shreds. It was estimated 
that each piece of contraband literature was read 
by an average of one hundred persons. 

Throughout the summer of 191 8 there was an 
orgy of rumor in Switzerland about Austria and 
Germany. Every one agreed that Austria was 
in a serious condition. It was early reported 
that there was complete demoralization there; 
trains did not run on schedule, mails were not 
delivered, and men died at their posts of starva- 
tion. But in each little set of people there was 
gossip of a different character about Germany, 
and the conflicting conclusions which were 
drawn and the varying predictions which were 



^14 A Year as a Government Agent 

made were colored, imdoubtedly, by the sympa- 
thies and political beliefs or general interests of 
those who retailed them. But, even so, the con- 
clusions and predictions soon ceased to point to 
a German victory. The question now came to 
be merely how long Germany could hold out. 

My friends in Zurich said that when relatives 
of theirs came from Germany to visit Switzer- 
land, thin and pale, to recuperate and grow fat 
even on the slim Swiss diet, they were obliged, on 
crossing the German frontier, to sign a paper 
swearing that they would tell nothing unfavor- 
able about conditions in Germany. At first, 
when they came, they remembered their pledge 
and would say nothing, but by degrees — ^for in- 
stance, during conversations at the dinner-table 
— all sorts of little things woiild slip out involun- 
tarily. There was gossip, and imdoubtedly ex- 
aggeration, about the enormous cost and the 
scarcity of everything. People of distinguished 
social position ever3rwhere in Germany, they 
said, went barefooted during the summer of 
191 8 in order to set a fashion of economy in 
shoes. This they did with apparent cheerf illness 
under a pretext of seeking beauty and health. 
But food, they said, was more plentiful than it 
had been the year before. Perhaps the German 
government had been forced to relax its restric- 
tions because of its great promises of Ukrainian 
grain. 

Stories of the lawless conditions in Berlin fore- 



The Approaching E?id 215 

shadowed the era of wild dissipation in Germany 
that followed the armistice. It was apparent 
that the old German domestic life with its meek 
and obedient hausfrauen was a thing of the past. 
The women, some of whom had fallen into habits 
of immorality, difficult to believe, were reluc- 
tant, or even afraid, to have their husbands — 
made uncivilized by warfare and trench life — 
come home on leave. Thefts and violence on the 
streets, as we all had heard, were only too com- 
mon. When complaints were made at police 
headquarters the complainers were rebuffed for 
making trouble about such trifles in time of war ! 
Gossip from these sources ceased later in the 
summer, because, probably, it was foimd that 
the exacted pledges of silence did little good, 
and traveling from Germany to Switzerland, 
which formerly had been easy, was almost en- 
tirely cut off. 

From a group of Swiss and cosmopolitan jour- 
nalists information of another sort came. Early 
in July they had received assurances that in 
October a well-defined peace offensive would be 
made in behalf of the Central Powers, through 
Austria. This bit of gossip proved to be more 
accurate than the rumor that in July or early 
August the Germans would begin a great and 
finally overwhelming offensive. Perhaps they 
had planned to! It was said, also, that in Ger- 
many at this time the military power had become 
supreme; that every important state paper an(J 



2i6 A Year as a Government Agent 

communication went first to Ludendorff before 
it reached the civil officials. This the journalists 
took to indicate the collapse of the civil govern- 
ment. From Swiss business men in the German- 
Swiss cities we heard in August that, although 
there seemed no chance of a civilian uprising or 
revolution in Germany — always a fond hope of 
the German exiles — the morale and discipline of 
the German army was breaking down. Some 
of these Swiss business men, who were German 
in sympathy, feared, now that it had started, 
it would go very fast. 

About this time one of the German democrats 
had information that trouble was brewing in the 
German navy and an outbreak beginning there 
might be expected. We probably did not then 
realize the significance of this report. But later, 
after the signing of the armistice, when it was 
common gossip that the political revolution had 
begun in the German navy at Kiel, and that the 
movement there was of so determined a nature 
that groups of sailors were sent about the coun- 
try to stir the civilians to action, I often thought 
of this early report and wondered how it had so 
promptly reached the German exiles in Switzer- 
land. 

In September, when the Allies were advancing, 
I heard from an editor of a German-Swiss paper 
that the severity of the German censorship and 
the methods of its military propaganda had de- 
feated their own purpose and that the German 




THE ANCIENT ZEITGLOCKENTURM, BERNE, SWITZERLAND 



The Approaching End 217 

people had begun to discount all military and 
political information and disbelieve everything 
they were told. To such an extent was this true 
that in many of the more remote parts of the 
empire it was firmly believed that the Allies 
were already on German ground. 

The general trend of this gossip, unreliable as 
most of it was, seemed to show undoubtedly 
that conditions in Germany were bad. This 
knowledge, taken in connection with the collapse 
of Bulgaria, the peace advances of Austria ia 
September, and the steady military victories of 
the Allies on the western front, led me to feel that 
the end of the war was near. I lost interest in 
the military news ; I f otmd I could not even read 
it, and I seemed to myself to be holding my 
breath, waiting for the way in which the final 
peace step would come. I began to feel that the 
work I had gone to Switzerland to do was over, 
and my thoughts turned insistently toward 
home. Yet, when the request for the armistice 
finally did come from the Central Powers on 
October 5th, its effect upon me was as of a sud- 
den and unexpected miracle. It seemed a thing 
too great and surprising to comprehend. 

I heard of it as I was motoring from Berne to 
Geneva. When I passed through Lausanne I saw 
a crowd of people standing silently before the 
bulletin-board of the Gazette de Lausanne. What 
was it, I wondered, they were standing there so 
silently and intently looking at? Was there an- 



2i8 A Year as a Government Agent 

other military victory for the Allies? I stopped 
the motor and went to see. And there was 
posted the news — the great and surprising news 
we had been waiting for and expecting so long. 
No wonder the crowd was silent, as if stunned. 
It meant so much. The end at last of the long 
years of slaughter! For me, my first selfish 
thought was that it meant home, because never 
from that moment did I have a doubt that the 
end of the war had come. 

I believe that if the war had gone on for ten 
years I should have had the courage to stay tm- 
flinchingly at my post. And I did not under- 
estimate the courage it would have taken. I 
could measure it by the way my spirits flagged 
at times. But I had found a formula, which 
served unfailingly to revive them. It was simply 
to call my post the "Berne Trench," and remind 
myself of what others in other trenches were 
called upon to endure. My part seemed easy 
enough in comparison. I remember one day 
walking along the busy, crowded Bahnhofstrasse 
of Ziirich with the Italian journalist, on the way 
to see a new Italian book-shop. We talked, he in 
his Italian French, I in my American French, of 
the hardships of the war. He had been in active 
service for three years in Italy, he told me, and, 
of all the suffering he had endured, it was the 
mud of the trenches that he had hated most. 
He hated it when it was wet and soft ; he hated 
it when it had grown stiff on his clothes and on 



The Approaching End 219 

his skin. He had a beard — I wondered why he 
did not shave it — ^and he said the mud got into 
it. He could feel, could even taste, the mud still. 
The horror of it possessed him like a nightmare. 
But sometimes he felt that the loneliness and 
strife and difficulties in Switzerland were worse, 
even, than the danger and the mud of the 
Italian trenches, and he wished he was back 
again, for at least there one had a feeling of com- 
panionship and an inspiration which were totally 
lacking here. 

He asked me how it was that, once away from 
Berne, I had had the courage to return. I said 
that when men were ordered back to the trenches 
they went, and that Berne had seemed merely 
the particular trench to which I had been as- 
signed, and that at least it was free from the mud 
and other hardships of the real trenches. 

I had written to Mr. Creel that he could de- 
pend upon my staying on in Switzerland to the 
very end of the war, no matter how long it lasted. 
But, now that the end was at hand, everything 
was changed. From now on I began to feel the 
cold of the unheated hotel. I rebelled against 
the inconvenience of going without hot water 
for baths except on Saturdays. I looked with 
distaste at the unappetizing, scanty food. I 
became restless over the confinement of my 
work that gave me no time for exercise, 
and especially I felt the want of human 
relations. When for weeks and weeks no 



220 A Year as a Government Agent 

letters came from home, or from friends in 
France, through those relentless war barriers of 
the censorship in France and Switzerland, I grew 
homesick all over again. In fact, everything 
which previously I had accepted almost without 
a rebellious thought began now to weigh upon 
my spirits. I wanted to go home. I began writ- 
ing and cabling to Washington, suggesting modi- 
fications of the work and begging for my release. 
I felt the main purpose of the work, as far as my 
part went, would be accomplished when the 
armistice was signed. And 1 had no doubt that 
the armistice would be signed soon. But among 
the Americans and Allies in Switzerland I was 
almost alone in thinking so. Of course, our work 
had to be carried on as vigorously as ever to the 
very end, and this necessity may have had some- 
thing to do with the feeling of the Americans 
there that the war itself would last for at least 
another year. How they insisted upon it ! When, 
in early October, I boldly made a bet that hos- 
tilities would be over by December 15th, I was 
laughed at. I was being deceived, I was told, by 
what was merely the well-defined German peace- 
offensive that had been so long talked of and 
expected by everybody. It was in reality, the 
wiseacres said, nothing but another propaganda 
effort on the part of the enemy to bring discord 
among the Allies. 

I was demoralized to such an extent by the 
approaching end that I found refuge only in 



The Approaching End 221 

increased work. Our office was busier than ever. 
Official messages, or "notes," came frequently. 
Even when they did not come we were on the 
alert to receive them. All the other activities of 
our office I pushed with all my energy. Work was 
hurried on pamphlets, on films — on everything. 
The distribution, too, of the pamphlets was ex- 
tended. I felt I could take no time to eat or to 
sleep, because it was of the greatest importance 
that at this moment, when the enemy might be 
hesitating over the acceptance of hard terms, he 
should be made to realize to the fullest extent 
the power of our resources and the character of 
our warlike determination. There seemed so 
short a time left for our efforts to be effective ! 



CHAPTER XI 

\ GRIEF AND ADVENTURE 

AT this time another epidemic of the Spanish 
grippe broke out in Switzerland, and espe- 
cially in Berne, and brought a personal grief to 
me. The hospitals were crowded and were turn- 
ing away patients. Nurses could not be found. 
It was a hard time for every one. Our own office 
force was crippled by it. One of our employees 
•who had fallen ill was a young man from Luxem- 
burg. He had worked in Mr. Fife's department, 
and I could not recall ever having seen him. At 
first we heard that he hoped to be well enough 
in a day or two to return to his work. One Mon- 
day morning no message came, and I sent to 
inquire. He was found delirious, alone in a 
rented room. His landlady, too, was ill. He had 
no friends or relations in Switzerland. He was 
absolutely alone. We tried in vain to get him 
into a hospital. We tried in vain to find a nurse 
for him or to have him moved where he could 
be taken care of. The Swiss doctor I sent to look 
after him was overworked himself and could 
not help very much. What was to be done? It 



Grief and Adventure 223 

would be like murder to leave the boy alone to 
die. I constilted the office force, but no one 
showed any inclination to volunteer as a nurse. 
I myself felt torn between the responsibility of 
continuing my work at the office and the respon- 
sibility of taking care of this boy I had never 
seen. In this dilemma I thought of my little 
maid, Hedwig. I knew at once that she would 
help. She had come to me the previous February 
when I had first arrived in Switzerland. She had 
been properly recommended; but every one, the 
diplomats especially, had suspected her of being 
a German spy. Even Professor Rappard had 
been imeasy about her. He said that Hedwig 
is a German name, almost imknown in Switzer- 
land, and we knew that she had formerly served 
a German princess. But I was confident that 
she was not a spy. When he and the diplomats 
asked me how I knew she was not, they thought 
I gave no answer at all when I said I could tell 
by looking at her that she was honest through 
and through. 

She was conscientious, too, and happy-hearted 
and gay, and capable of big things, as her death 
showed. There never was a person so open to 
appeal. When I had determined at the end of 
March to leave Berne and come back to America 
I asked Hedwig if she would come with me. 
''Oh," she said, ''I should like to do it, but it's 
too dangerous with the German submarines. I'd 
be afraid." I was discouraged at that time by 



N 



224 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

my experiences with the diplomats and tried by 
my failures. Had every one in the world grown 
cautious and ignoble? I wondered. I ought not to 
be surprised that a little lady's maid, too, should 
be cautious; after all, it was natural enough. I 
gave little attention to what I answered. Perhaps 
it was something to the effect that it did not 
seem to me the time for us to treasure our own 
lives so carefully, with the great tragedies that 
were taking place daily on the battle-fields. I 
have wondered what there could have been in 
anything I said that touched Hedwig's heart and 
fired her imagination. I stared at her in sur- 
prise when she answered, quickly, ''Madame is 
right, and I'll go across the ocean with her back 
and forth whenever she goes." But in two days 
I was off without Hedwig, because her passport 
could not be arranged so quickly. 

When I came back to Berne in June Hedwig 
joined me again. How she bullied me ! She would 
brush my hair and tie it up in blue ribbons each 
night, as I leaned over my papers, no matter 
how busy and preoccupied I was. She loved 
pretty things for herself and for me, and would 
plan to have me dressed up in the clothes she 
liked best, at least on Sundays. She disapproved 
of my way of living. She thought that my hasty 
luncheon at the office was absurd, when every 
one else took two hours in the middle of the day 
to eat and rest. She would bring my sandwich 
to me and put it out on my long, crowded table 



Grief and Adventure 225 

as temptingly as she could, and try to woo my 
attention from clippings and articles. Sometimes 
she would bring flowers, too, especially on mar- 
ket-days when they were sold on the streets. 
She would stay on, standing there at my table 
imtil I started to eat. She would jeer a little at 
me, saying such things as, " Madame thinks she's 
made of different stuff from other people, and 
doesn't need to eat and sleep." She would say 
I was too thin, and that imless I ate and slept 
more I would never be considered a beauty in 
** Canton Berne," because there in ''Canton 
Berne" fat ladies only were admired. At the 
couriers' table she had heard them all talk of a 
very great beauty. The lady, when she saw her, 
was a mere movintain of flesh. Yes, raadame 
should eat and rest more! She would try to 
tempt me from my work, and sometimes she 
would telephone me from the hotel in the late 
afternoons to say that the Alpine glow was going 
to be beautiful, and that if madame would only 
hurry home she could see it from her little bal- 
cony. The big armchair was already put out 
there, waiting for madame. 

Hedwig herself was yoimg and plump and 
pretty. She often slept late in the mornings and 
was always annoyed with herself when she found 
me up and dressed and ready to go to my office 
before she or any one else in the hotel had 
shivered out of bed. To make up for it, she 

would stay up later and later at night, and thus 
15 



226 A Year as a Government Agent 

make her next morning's rising all the more diffi- 
cult. She loved Sonny and taught him to shake 
hands, which he did in a solemn, listless way. 
She was going to teach him to sit up, and other 
tricks, so he woiild astonish my friends when we 
all went to America together! 

She was amused because he would never play 
with the aristocratic little dogs in the hotel. He 
would pass them without a glance, or draw up his 
lip scornfully over his long eye-tooth. But on 
market-days he would desert me on the way to the 
office and spend the day playing and fighting with 
the most plebeian dogs in Berne. They would all 
gather in the market-place — dogs that had drawn 
wagons from farms, dogs that lived in city alleys, 
dogs covered with fleas and with sores. When 
their play degenerated into fights it would be 
ended, perhaps, by the kicks of a market-woman. 
He would come home at evening, tired and dirty. 
Hedwig would welcome him reproachfully, brush 
him carefully, and wipe him off with towels. 
He could not be washed; there would be no 
warm water until Saturday. Hedwig at first 
objected to Sonny's market-day sprees. Other 
people did, too. There was rarely a market-day 
that the concierge of the hotel or some acquaint- 
ance didn't telephone me to say that he had 
seen Sonny in the market-place and had tried, 
but couldn't catch him. My informant would 
add that he knew I wouldn't want Sonny running 
about with all the street dogs in Berne. It was 



Grief and Adventure 227 

asstimed that I woiild send for him and punish 
him and keep him in proper surroundings. But 
I did not feel that way. I was glad for Sonny to 
have a little freedom. I would smile to myself at 
his democratic tastes. I told Hedwig of how, in 
my own sheltered childhood, I used to look from 
the windows of a great high house, and how my 
heart would almost burst to be free and to play 
with the little boys in the street. Hedwig imder- 
stood. After that, on market-days when she 
brought my luncheon to the office, she would 
look at the empty big chair and say, with a smile, 
** Sonny not here?" or she would tell me that 
she had caught a glimpse of him as she had 
passed through the market-place, and that to- 
day he was dirtier and happier than ever. He 
had pretended not to see her. Yes, Hedwig un- 
derstood all about it. 

It was to Hedwig I turned in my dilemma 
about the Luxemburg boy. I hurried from my 
office to the hotel in the middle of the day and 
told her about him. I did not even have time 
to ask her to take care of him. At once she 
begged that she might be allowed to do so. She 
said that she, too, longed to be of service. I re- 
minded her of the mortality among those who 
nursed. She did not care. She would be so very 
proud to help, she said. She went to his board- 
ing-house and nursed him through a desperate 
illness and saved his life. When we thought he 
was going to die we sent for his mother. She 



228 A Year as a Government Agent 

came and stayed to nurse him back to health 
and strength. But before she came Hedwig her- 
self had caught the grippe. At first she wotildn*t 
leave her patient and go to bed, as she should 
have. No, no; she ridiculed the idea of being 
really ill. She had never been in bed one day in 
her life and she couldn't desert her patient. We 
had then found a man nurse, but Hedwig felt 
that he would not understand the case as she 
did. And madame herself, she said, had been 
so neglected; madame's clothes must be looked 
after, too, now that the young man was better. 
But a day soon came when, with all her deter- 
mination, she could not get up from her bed. 
The American Red Cross doctor lent me his 
ntirse to take care of her. He himself consulted 
with the Swiss doctors and did everything to 
help. But she grew very ill at the time when I 
was busiest. One Thursday night' I had to leave 
Berne on an important matter. I went to say 
good-by to her. I told her I would be back on 
the following Saturday morning, away two nights 
and a day onty. How I hoped I would find her 
better. "Not back until Saturday, madame .f*'* 
Hedwig said, in a hushed tone, as if it meant 
all eternity. When I came back she was worse. 
There were nights when we had to hold her in bed 
in her delirium. In a lucid moment she told me 
she did not want to die. She was afraid to die, 
she said; but all the same she was glad she had 
nursed the young man, no matter what hap- 



Grief and Adventure 229 

pened. Just before she died, after a long period 
of unconsciousness, she opened her eyes and 
recognized us all. She asked for Sonny. I 
hurried to find him, and put him on the bed 
beside her. He was so glad to see her again 
and he licked her poor hand, moving in stiff, 
blind jerks to pat him. She talked haltingly 
for a moment of how she had always tried to 
do her best, and then she said, ''Madame, I'll 
never, never go to America with you." And 
soon little Hedwig, who had been so gallant 
and so gay, breathed her last, and I was left 
with a heavy heart. 

It was while she was ill that the burden of our 
work was heaviest and our difficulties were 
greatest. The epidemic hampered all efforts. 
Industrial troubles which had been threatening 
in Switzerland for a long time were coming to 
a head. It was no wonder that they did, because 
Switzerland, although a neutral coimtry, had 
felt all along the pinch of war keenly. Her food 
was insufficient. Milk, sugar, bread, cheese, and 
grease were rationed so carefully that the quan- 
tities allowed, I was told, were really insuffi- 
cient for the classes who could not afford luxuries. 
Meat was dear, although the cows which had 
made Switzerland a cheese-producing coimtry 
and which could not now be fed adequately 
were being sold and slaughtered for food. Her 
people were not only hungry; they were cold. 
Shoes and woolen clothes were prohibitive in 



230 A Year as a Government Agent 

price; coal was so dear and scarce that the 
houses could not be kept warm. The lack of 
coal, too, was halting her industries, except 
those which were manufacturing war-supplies. 
Her vast hotels, built for an army of tourists, 
were empty except in Zurich and Berne. The 
hours of labor in Switzerland were long and the 
wages were inadequate to meet the rising prices. 
Sections of her citizen army were constantly 
mobilized, which was an additional hardship. 
The international political conflicts of which she 
was the scene were threatening her own soli- 
darity by increasing the bitterness between the 
pro-Entente and pro-German elements of her 
population and of her governing bodies, and, 
worst of all, she was the scene of one devastating 
epidemic after another. When the international 
Socialists or the Bolshevists wished to extend 
their agitation into Switzerland, they undoubt- 
edly found local conditions which could easily 
be used as a starting-point. The troubles began 
in Zurich and were constant. 

The situation in that district was particularly 
difficult, because of the great number of foreign 
agitators who had congregated there after the 
beginning of the war. Germany, it was said, 
had exiled or sent into Switzerland her own 
agitators and Bolsheviks, thus at one stroke 
seeking to rid herself of a danger and to extend 
it through a neutral coimtry to the Allies. Once 
on Swiss ground, these men were active. There 



Grief and Adventure 231 

were strikes, parades, and other demonstrations. 
A day in early November, 191 8, was fixed for a 
national demonstration, a one-day strike, which 
was to paralyze all industries, street-cars, mails, 
and trains. Certain local reforms were de- 
manded — ^higher wages, a shorter workday, and 
an early re-election of Parliament by the recently 
adopted method of proportional representa- 
tion. This method had been voted a few weeks 
before by an overwhelming majority at a na- 
tional referendum. The Parliament, which was 
then sitting, had several years still to serve out 
its term before, in the natural course, another 
one would be elected. But the Socialists were 
impatient for the new method. Such were the 
ostensible reasons for the proposed great na- 
tional demonstration. But there were rumors 
that the effort was financed by the Russian 
Bolsheviks and looked toward establishing, 
finally, a soviet form of government. The Swiss 
officials believed it was a pure Bolshevist upris- 
ing and prepared to meet it adequately. The 
government mobilized its citizen army with sud- 
den effectiveness. The French cantons and the 
agricultural districts were called upon to furnish 
the troops to allay the disorder, because French 
Switzerland was more free than German Switzer- 
land from industrial discontent, and because the 
peasants throughout the country, owners of 
their own farms, were strongly organized and 
widely separated in interests from the industrial 



232 A Year as a Government Agent 

classes of the cities, and were already somewhat 
antagonistic to them. 

There had been a great deal of talk of the 
threatening trouble, but I was too absorbed in 
the details of my office work to pay much atten- 
tion to it, until I found that our own work was 
hampered by the absence of one-half of the 
men we employed. Some of them were ill with 
the grippe, and the others had been suddenly 
mobilized. 

It was during these trying and threatening 
conditions that a message came to our office 
from President Wilson which stirred us to a day 
of feverish activity. It was that I should get 
the widest possible publicity for an appeal he 
was sending to the ''constituent nations of 
Austria-Himgary that had achieved liberation 
from the yoke of the Austro-Himgarian Empire.*' 
The appeal was that these nations should keep 
order, and it read: '' May I not say, as speaking 
for multitudes of your most sincere friends, that 
it is the earnest hope and expectation of ail 
friends of freedom everywhere, and particularly 
of those whose present and immediate task it is 
to assist the liberated peoples of the world to 
establish themselves in genuine freedom, that 
both the leaders and the peoples of the countries 
recently set free shall see to it that the momen- 
tous changes now being brought about are car- 
ried through with order, with moderation, with 
mercv as well as firmness, and that violence and 



Grief and Adventure 233 

cruelty of every kind are checked and prevented 
so that nothing inhumane may stain the annals 
of the new age of achievement.*' 

I had two problems with the message; one 
was to have it translated and printed, and the 
other to obtain publicity for it. President Wil- 
son's instructions were definite, and went even 
so far as to say that I was to have the "necessary 
translations prepared"! The message was de- 
livered about ten o'clock in the morning of No- 
vember 7th. The epidemic was raging. Our office 
force was crippled. There was a strike in the 
printing trades — a forerunner of the larger Bol- 
shevist demonstration. There could not have 
been a worse time for a piece of emergency work. 
The one sentence forming the appeal presented 
almost insuperable difficulties to the minds of 
foreign translators. But so did all of President 
Wilson's utterances. And the printing! One 
firm imdertook to do it that day within a speci- 
fied time, and after a two-hour interval, when I 
went back suspiciously to see what progress was 
being made, they acknowledged they could not 
do it. I took it to another firm. They had no 
workmen at all; they said the strikers would not 
allow them to run their presses. But members of 
the owner's family finally promised to help 
out and print oiu* message immediately in four 
languages — German, Hungarian, Italian, and 
French. 

The problem as to the publicity was how to 



234 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

send the appeal from Switzerland to the coun- 
tries which were formerly the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire, because communication between Switz- 
erland and the countries to the east seemed to 
have halted completely. Even after the appeal 
was sent across the frontier there might be diffi- 
culty in distributing it, because it was reported 
that the telegraph-wires there were down and 
that there was no mail service. But we knew 
merely the barest facts — ^that three days before 
then the Allies had signed the armistice with 
Austria - Hungary, and that the Allied armies 
were now in control. Already the old Austro- 
Hungarian government was a thing of the past. 
Hungary had broken away from Austria and 
had a democratic council of her own and there 
seemed to be the bitterest feeling between the 
two. It could be guessed that the new local 
council in Vienna, under Doctor Seitz^s direction, 
was having to face enormous difficulties. No late 
news had come from the new countries of the 
Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs. In fact, we 
knew very little of what was happening across 
the frontier. 

There were, of course, some simple means to 
try for publicity, and I neglected none of them. 
We sent the message to all the French- German- 
and Italian-Swiss papers and to the missions in 
Switzerland which were maintained by the coun- 
tries formerly under the Austro-Hungarian yoke. 
In spite of reports that it was useless, I tried 



Grief and Adventure 235 

sending the message by telegraph to the new 
governing councils, the Nationalrats and Staats- 
rats, which had been set up in these new coun- 
tries, and to all of the chief newspapers. 

There was the Wiener Korrespondenz, the for- 
merly official Austrian news agency. I had al- 
ready been to see its managers and had discussed 
with them the feasibility of the agency using 
American news items which we thought might 
be of interest to their papers. Through them I 
had heard that present communications with 
Austria were uncertain. Now that I wanted 
publicity for the President's message I called on 
them again. 

They told me that there had been no com- 
miinications from Austria since the signing of 
the armistice; that they believed there was no 
means whatever of direct communication, but 
that they would try in a few days to send a 
courier through Munich and in that way seek 
to reach Vienna. They at once took five thou- 
sand copies of the message for distribution, and 
for weeks after we supplied them steadily with 
a large number in various languages. 

The news agencies, such as the Wiener Korre- 
spondenz and later the German agency, Wolff, 
were in a curious position. They were official 
agencies, or, rather, semi-official — officieux, in 
distinction to officiel, a difference upon which the 
diplomats insisted, as if therein resided the differ- 
ence between life and death. Well, these semi- 



236 A Year as a Government Agent 

official officieux agencies were instruments of 
their governments. In the crisis, when it was 
uncertain from day to day what kind of govern- 
ment would be established at home, these news 
agencies were far from happy. The men in 
charge of the Wiener Korrespondenz were Jews, 
whose personal sympathies seemed to incline 
toward the most liberal and democratic side. I 
do not doubt that they considered their own 
coimtry, Austria, with its new government un- 
der Doctor Seitz, as included among the nations 
which had liberated themselves from the yoke 
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

I wondered what President Wilson thought. 
Were the remnants of what were formerly Aus- 
tria and Hungary proper, even with their new 
democratic councils, excluded from the coimtries 
to which he had addressed his appeal? And 
would not the appeal itself seem to these dis- 
tracted and starving people a promise to all of 
them of friendship and protection in their effort 
to maintain order and to act with moderation 
and mercy? What encouragement it woiild give, 
but what hopes it would raise! But my job was 
uncomplicated by such considerations. It was 
merely to obtain the widest possible publicity. 
In order to do it, the appeal must be sent across 
the border into the coiintries to which it was 
addressed. I asked our Military Intelligence De- 
partment what they knew of conditions there 
and how I could send the message across. They 



Grief and Adventure 237 

knew nothing at all. They had established no 
communication. 

It seemed that the simplest way of sending 
the message would be through Italy. There, at 
least, the frontiers were opened to Italian offi- 
cials, and the message could be sent for pub- 
lication through official sources into the con- 
quered and liberated coimtries. I went to see 
the Italian representatives. I showed them my 
cable from President Wilson and asked them 
what help they could give. They hesitated. 
Such things must be done in order, they said. 
There was an inter- Allied commission in Italy. 
Undoubtedly, the President's appeal had been 
sent directly to them as well as to me. There- 
fore it would be useless to send it a second time. 
They could not agree to take the appeal and for- 
ward it immediately to the inter- Allied commis- 
sion, as I suggested; no, they must first ask if 
the commission had received a similar message. 
If they had not, they then could be asked to 
distribute it to the countries liberated from the 
Austro-Hungarian yoke. But the inquiry must 
go first. I said I was eager for what help they 
could give, and I asked if they would inquire at 
once. But such matters, they said, could not be 
hurried. It was well I did not trust entirely to 
them. Thirteen days later their answer came. 
They would be delighted to distribute the appeal. 
In that interval disorders might have broken 
out, revolutions might have succeeded one an- 



238 A Year as a Government Agent 

other, violence and cruelty might already have 
stained forever the annals of the new age, for at 
such times things move quickly. At any rate, 
when their answer came it seemed like the day 
after the feast, but I accepted their offer of 
assistance and supplied them with all the transla- 
tions and copies they would undertake to use. 
They made no report to me, so I never knew 
what they did ; but even when I asked for their 
help I knew I must find other ways, too. But 
what other ways were there? I began to feel that 
the only safe and quick means was to send an 
agent of my own across the Swiss frontier. I 
telephoned again to the military attache and 
asked if he could lend me any one to send. To- 
morrow he would try to find some one — ^but 
that, too, was vague. I said I hoped he would 
try, but in the mean time I would find some one 
myself to-day. I had some one in mind to send, 
because only a few days before I had received a 
visit in my office from Rosika Schwimmer. She 
could go for me. She was a Hungarian and she 
would have a Himgarian passport. She could 
get across the frontier, and she knew the neces- 
sary languages. I was sure she would not be 
afraid, and she, a pacifist, would want to take a 
message appealing for peace. I had known her 
in the autumn of 19 14, when she had come to 
America and had spoken at the National Amer- 
ican Woman Suffrage Convention. She is a 
great orator, and had spoken like one inspired 



Grief and Adventure 239 

of the horrors of war and of the hope of peace. 
She had made the most impassioned plea for 
women the world over to work unitedly for 
peace and had presented a resolution to the 
suffrage convention protesting against the war 
and the suffering of our sister women in Europe. 
As I remember it, her protests seemed to me to 
be protests against all war, and protests especially 
against Germany's aggression in bringing on this 
war. I believed that she was a sincere pacifist, 
although from the beginning she was freely 
accused of working in Germany's behalf, and 
even of being a German agent. Later she became 
notorious in this country as the organizer of the 
ill-fated Ford peace ship. 

At the suffrage convention I had had a trial of 
strength with her. Her peace resolution was 
referred to the resolutions committee, of which 
Miss Jane Addams was chairman, and I a mem- 
ber. I was new in suffrage activities in those 
days, and, although I believed in peace and 
hated war, I fought hard during long hours of 
the night against the committee's accepting 
Madame Schwimmer's resolution. My opposi- 
tion was on the ground that the object of the 
suffrage organization was a single one, and it 
should make no exception to its old rule of one 
plank only. If women wanted to do anything 
for peace, they should form another organization 
for that purpose. Madame Schwimmer came 
before the resolutions committee to urge her 



240 A Year as a Government Agent 

resolution, and Miss Addams wanted it, but the 
committee decided against it. That was the 
only time I had seen Rosika Schwimmer before 
she called upon me in Berne. 

Now, I knew she could be trusted to take the 
President's appeal well, and would be daunted 
by no hardship or dangers. Who could doubt it 
who had once seen her prominent chin and the 
determined look in her eyes? In the midst of 
orders for translations and printing and all the 
other things I had to do that day, I went to the 
Bemerhof Hotel to call on Madame Schwimmer. 
I fotind her in the entrance-hall. I told her I 
wanted to ask her help, but, as it was on a mat- 
ter important to me, I should like first to see her 
credentials. How I hated to adopt the methods 
of diplomatic caution! Why did she not refuse 
to show me her papers and tell me to go about 
my business? But she must have grown familiar 
with such cautions, and, instead of resenting 
my request, she showed me the papers I wanted 
to see. She had letters as a representative of 
Karolyi, the head of the new democratic govern- 
ment in Hungary. She and Karolyi were both 
pacifists. They had both wanted Austria-Hun- 
gary to break away from Germany and make a 
separate peace, and Karolyi had urged it espe- 
cially at the time that President Wilson had 
made his speech in January, 191 8, containing the 
now famous foiuteen points. I looked at all her 
papers carefully and then told her that I wanted 



Grief and Adventure 241 

her to leave that night and take with her across 
the frontier printed copies of the President's 
appeal, for which she was to obtain the widest 
distribution in every language known in the 
Balkans. She was very busy herself, poor lady! 
She was tired, too, for she had just arrived in 
Switzerland after a trip of many hardships. But 
she has a gallant spirit and I overrode all objec- 
tions. She agreed to go, and started at once to 
pull every wire known in order to have her pass- 
port visaed in time. She wanted to go because 
those war-distracted countries looked to America 
as their hope for peace and for food. They who 
remembered every word spoken by our President 
believed our spirit to be a liberal one. They be- 
lieved America, with its great resources hardly 
yet strained, would come to the rescue of all 
starving lands. Madame Schwimmer herself, 
too, shared the common faith in Wilson and the 
common hope in America, and she was glad to go. 
I agreed to go as far as I could with her — to 
take her myself at least as far as the frontier. 

There was a rumor that within Austria and 
Hungary the lines of communication, the rail- 
roads and telegraph-wires, which had not been 
destroyed, were already in control of the Allied 
military forces. If this was so, Madame Schwim- 
mer, once across the frontier, would need a word 
explaining her mission to the Allied authorities. 
I went again to our military attache to tell him 

that I had found an agent to take my message 
16 



242 A Year as a Government Agent 

across the frontier. I told him who it was and 
asked him for a note explaining the nature of her 
errand to whatever Allied forces might be in 
charge of the railroads. But in those days dan- 
gers were seen at every turn — Madame Schwim- 
mer had been suspected. He refused to help in 
any way in such an undertaking. The assistant 
attache, a man of foreign birth, was scornful, 
and asked, sneeringly, if I considered her a 
"serious person." That adjective, in its foreign 
use, means everything. A person who isn't 
"serious" might be anything that is bad or 
foolish. I asked if either of them had any 
definite information against her. I insisted 
that I had a right to be told all they knew, 
since I proposed to use her on such an errand. 
The only information that I could find was 
that she had been connected with the Ford 
peace ship, and that I had already known, 
and I did not feel that it interfered with her 
usefulness in this emergency. 

There was the Minister, Mr. Stovall ; perhaps 
he would help me out. You see how determined 
I was to get all the assistance possible. I went 
to see him. I explained to him that I had first 
appealed to the military attache and the assistant 
attache, and that they had refused to give me 
any help because of Madame Schwimmer. I 
assured him that I was not keen to run any 
risks of involving myself or any one else in a dan- 
gerous situation. I did not want to have his 



Grief and Adventure 243 

own predictions of the failure of my work come 
true, but I had confidence in my own judgment 
and was sure I was making no mistake now. 
The Minister was perplexed. The second secre- 
tary of legation, whose particular gift is caution, 
was away and his advice could not be sought. 
The Minister evidently did not want to refuse 
to help with a message which had come so 
straight from the President with such explicit 
instructions for obtaining publicity. But he 
hesitated. How could it be done without commit- 
ting himself to any responsibility? At last it was 
agreed that I should write out something which 
would not commit him, and if it was phrased 
with sufficient care he would consider signing it ! 
Late that evening he came to my office and I 
had the note ready. He took it away for further 
consideration. He did not sign it, but he finally 
discovered what he felt was a way out of the 
dilemma. He had decided that he could not 
write or sign a letter directly for Madame 
Schwimmer to take, no matter how non-com- 
mittal, but he felt he would not be running too 
great a risk if he wrote a note to me instead, say- 
ing that he hoped the agent whom I should 
select would be given facilities to take the mes- 
sage. I, in turn, was to write to Madame 
Schwimmer that she was my agent, and the chain 
would then be complete, and if anything awful 
resulted he would be at least two removes from 
the catastrophe and I would stand between him 



244 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

and blame. He sent me such a letter,^ but as 
it was written in a somewhat illegible longhand 
without the usual important-looking legation 
seal, or anything to show that it was official, or 
even officieuse, it did not promise to be of as- 
sistance — rather the contrary — in circumstances 
where suspicions would be keen. It might easily 
have brought upon an agent, in whose hands 
it was found, an accusation of forgery. Any 
careful official would have looked upon it with 
doubt. 

Madame Schwimmer, undaunted by my fail- 
ure to procure assistance for her, was ready to 
go. She had even found time in the hurry of the 
day's preparations to go to the printer's and 
correct the proof of the Himgarian translation. 
The pamphlets, printed on the very thinnest 
paper as ordered and neatly done up in packages, 
were delivered at nine-thirty o'clock that night 
as promised. Strange that for once something 
should have been done on time in Switzerland! 
I had had to use my motor all day and it was 
not ready for so long a jotimey. Again I was 
fortunate, because for once I fotind an American 
ready to help. He was a young officer then in 
charge of the United States Army Purchasing 
Department in Switzerland. He let me have 
one of his department motors and two chauffeurs; 
and he decided to come himself. Just twelve 
hours after the President's message had arrived 

^Appendix XXXII. 



Grief and Adventure 245 

our little party, accompanied by Sonny, started 
off about ten o'clock in the evening. 

Through the night, as the motor rolled lum- 
beringly along, Madame Schwimmer talked of 
all the trials that Hungary had suffered in the 
war. She talked of Austria and of the men and 
of the movements of which we had been hearing 
dimly through the closed frontiers during the 
long war years. She talked and then she slept. 
I did not want to sleep. I wanted to look out of 
the car at the beautiful country we were passing 
through. But the night was dark and I must 
have dozed more than I thought, because the 
time seemed so short and daybreak came so 
quickly. At six-thirty or seven o'clock we ar- 
rived at Bucks, the town on the Swiss side of the 
frontier into Austria. The border there is a river 
crossed by an old, covered, wooden bridge. At 
the end farthest from the Swiss shore a barri- 
cade of some sort had been erected. There were 
soldiers on the Swiss side guarding the approach 
to the bridge as well as stationed upon it, and 
military messengers were standing about, ready 
with motor-cycles. 

We sought out the local officials. No one knew 
anything definite of conditions across that bridge. 
No one could tell us if trains ran or if telegraph- 
wires were intact. The only way to get Madame 
Schwimmer across was to take her over in the 
motor. There was a detachment of Swiss troops 
there and we went to the officer in charge. He 



246 A Year as a Govemmejit Agent 

said that no one had yet been across from Switz- 
erland, that there was grave danger in trying 
to go, that over the frontier there was a sale des- 
ordre, which, from his tone as well as his words, 
meant a ''filthy mess." We could see for our- 
selves, he said, if we looked this way, that be- 
yond the bridge there was a great mob clamoring 
dangerously behind the barriers ; only the troops 
were holding them back. It looked as if trouble 
was imminent. He shook his head. He seemed 
to think we were quite mad to think of going. 

We saw also the representatives of the Amer- 
ican and Italian Red Cross. The latter I remem- 
ber as a very fat man, who had been waiting 
patiently at Bucks to hear of the condition of 
Italian prisoners in Austria. He had had no 
news. He asked us, in case we succeeded in 
going across, to make inquiries for him. 

Madame Schwimmer had her passport. She 
could go. The young American officer and I had 
no passports and no papers. I wanted to go 
with Madame Schwimmer and see her started 
on her job, or at least I wanted to know what 
the conditions were which she would have to 
meet. Madame Schwimmer was a good sport 
and was determined to go on, and she thought it 
would be an interesting experience for me, too, 
to go across the frontier with her. She wanted 
to have me go. The difficulty was not only about 
going, but about being allowed to return through 
the barriers and across the covered bridge into 



Grief and Adventure 247 

Switzerland again, after we had once gone out. 
Madame Schwimmer telephoned to Swiss offi- 
cials in Berne, and we obtained permission for 
my return in the motor. The young officer de- 
cided to come with us, too, and off we started 
into the imknown. 



CHAPTER XII 

STRIFE AND CONFUSION 

T WAS tired and perhaps a little cross after 
^ the night in the motor and the hard work of 
the day before, but it seemed to me that there 
was never an adventure so tame. On the other 
side of the bridge behind the barricade, which 
opened for us and closed after us, the crowd 
seemed to me far from a clamoring, dangerous 
mob. It was merely a group of patiently waiting, 
ragged, himgry people, hoping to be let through 
the barriers into Switzerland where food and 
clothes could be had. There was an Austrian 
guard-house just over the bridge. It was in 
charge of soldiers in Austrian uniforms. They 
came out and perfunctorily looked through one 
of Madame Schwimmer's bags. They told us 
that, beyond, all was in confusion. They had 
received no orders since the armistice had been 
signed. They asked us no questions and they 
made no effort to see passports or papers. 

The Austrian frontier, at one time, must have 
been well protected, because at short intervals 
there were several other guard-houses. Our 



Strife and Confusion 249 

motor woiild stop; the Austrian officials in 
charge would come and look at us and shrug 
their shoulders, and on we would go. What 
could they do with a motor of one of the con- 
quering governments? For all they knew, we 
might be — any one. We passed groups of sol- 
diers walking along the roads who had evidently 
left the defeated Austrian army without cere- 
mony and were making their way home. Some 
of them stopped, noticed the U. S. A. on the 
motor, and cheered us. They were young men 
who must have felt that anything was better 
than the continuance of the war conditions. 
How they must have rejoiced to be on their way 
home at last to the fields of their childhood and 
to the cottages in which they had been born! 
We went on to Feldkirch, the first town on the 
Austrian side, in the district of Vorralberg. We 
went to the railroad station and found the same 
condition there as in the guard-houses. We were 
told that there was no effort at collecting cus- 
toms, making examinations, or at censorship. 
Everything was in disorder and confusion, but' 
there was no violence anywhere. Certainly we 
saw none. Word went about the town that 
American strangers v/ere there, and the new offi- 
cials, who were probably a self-constituted local 
authority, came to see us. We left the President's 
appeal with them. They received it warmly. 
They promised to publish it in the first issues 
that were printed of their papers. From thena 



250 A Year as a Government Agent 

we found that trains did run occasionally, but 
not on schedule ; that the Allied authorities had 
not yet taken charge of the lines of communi- 
cation. Poor Mr. Stovall! He might have been 
spared the difficulties of writing that note which 
was never used or needed, and which I took 
carefully back to him. The Vorralberg officials 
said we could imdoubtedly traverse the whole of 
Austria without question, and would probably 
receive a warm welcome everywhere. 

We asked about the Italian prisoners and 
heard that there were some in Feldkirch — in fact, 
we saw them there — ^poor, ragged men! There 
had been attempts to send still more of them on 
to Feldkirch, thinking that from there they 
could go into Switzerland. But as yet Switzer- 
land had not been able to arrange for their trans- 
portation across its territory and was refusing to 
admit them. Vorralberg could not feed them, 
so they were not allowed to leave the trains and 
were sent back to Innsbruck. How tired they 
must have been, locked in freight-cars and 
shimted back and forth! The officials thought 
they were in great need and distress in Inns- 
bruck. 

Madame Schwimmer must go on to Inns- 
bruck, but no one knew when a train would come 
and the officials suggested that we should motor 
there, where we would hear more accurate de- 
tails of what was happening. They said that 
the drive to Innsbruck over the mountains was 



Strife and Co?ifusion 251 

one of the most beautiful in the world. Their 
simple pride in the beauty of their country was 
unrestrained, in spite of the distress and need 
which siirrounded them. It could not be more 
beautiful, I thought, than the great mountains 
and deep valleys through which we had come 
that morning, as the sun rose and glinted 
through high, dark trees on a swift-running 
stream. 

We grew practical at once. We considered 
the distance to Innsbruck and the time it would 
take. We wanted to go, but we found that we 
would not have gasolene enough to go there 
and return to Zurich, and no more could be found 
until we reached Zurich again. Also there was 
work to be done in Berne and time was pressing. 
The young officer, too, wanted to get back. He 
had not understood one word of the interminable 
German conversations we had had, and he had 
grown impatient. So Madame Schwimmer was 
left alone at the Feldkirch station to await an 
uncertain train, which might come along in a 
few hours and take her on to Innsbruck, where 
again she must wait for unscheduled connections. 

Her instructions were to have the President's 
appeal translated and printed in the Czech, 
Slovak, Rumanian, Serbian, and Ruthenian lan- 
guages, in addition to the languages in which it 
had already been translated and printed, and to 
have it distributed to all the newly constituted 
authorities and to all the newspapers, and to 



2 52 A Year as a Government Agent 

have it printed upon large posters and displayed 
in all towns. Small handbills also were to be 
offered to various associations for distribution to 
their members. In fact, she was to leave no 
means untried to obtain the widest possible 
publicity for it. 

No one could give an impression of greater 
self-reliance than Madame Schwimmer. But in 
spite of that, I hated to leave her standing there 
alone at the station. I felt, as I looked back at 
her from the motor, as if I were deserting her, 
leaving her to go for me into imknown dangers 
without protection. As it was, she was not doing 
it for me at all — ^but for an appeal for the cause 
in which she believed supremely — peace. She 
was going through familiar countries, among 
people whose languages she knew, to carry the 
appeal to the people of countries at one time 
related to her own. What she had to suffer was 
merely great discomfort and fatigue. 

On our return across the bridge at Bucks we 
asked for the Italian Red Cross officer to give 
him the news he had wanted of the Italian pris- 
oners. He was not at the hotel where we had 
first seen him; he was not at the station. He 
might be at the room which the Red Cross used 
as an office, but we found it closed. We asked 
for him everywhere, and finally at another little 
hotel, where he lived, we were told he had just 
started across the frontier himself! He had 
waited patiently on the Swiss side for days for 



Strife and Confusion 253 

the information he needed, and now, when we 
were bringing it to him, he had gone himself to 
get it. The force of example was too much for 
him, I suppose, especially when set by two 
women ! 

We motored on steadily back to Berne. One 
chauffeur slept in his seat while the other drove. 
Toward night we lost a little time, as we got 
off the road going into Zurich, where we stopped 
for dinner and gasolene. The yotmg officer was 
tired and cross and we were both impatient of 
delays. We finally arrived in Berne before day- 
light of Saturday morning. 

That morning at the office there was an ac- 
cumulation of mail from my day's absence, but 
no morning letters or papers. The strike had 
begun. In Zurich, during the day, there were 
conflicts between the strikers and the troops. 
The strikers said they resented the great prepa- 
rations of the Swiss government and its extensive 
mobilization to meet a mere demonstration. A 
workers' committee sat at a little city near 
Zurich called Olten and considered the situation. 
On Monday, November nth, the one-day dem- 
onstration was turned into a strike of indefinite 
length, with the purpose of wringing from the 
government the concessions which the socialists 
and workers demanded. The government ac- 
cepted the challenge and strengthened its prepa- 
rations to subdue disorder. The strike was com- 
plete. Throughout Switzerland all industry was 



254 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

paralyzed. There were no newspapers, mail, 
trains, or street-cars. All shops were closed. 
Berne looked like a city of soldiers. It was full 
of them. The cavalry, mounted on its handsome 
horses, patrolled the streets constantly. The 
artillery was lined up on the side-streets with its 
mounted gims ready for action; the horses 
stood patiently attached to the gun-carriages. 
The infantry was camped out in the stone-flagged 
market-place and in the open squares. During 
the day, except for the soldiers, the city seemed 
deserted, but at night great masses of people 
stood about in the strange, uncertain lights and 
shadows thrown by the electric lamps. 

The market-place, where the winter before I 
had seen the old women of Berne sweeping, was 
especially crowded. It is in front of the Federal 
Palace in which the Parliament sat late each 
night, considering its knotty problems. The 
crowds stood silently or moved at times as a 
mass, when something called their attention to 
another place. Their order was astonishing. It 
was impossible to tell what proportion were 
strikers laboring under a feeling of injustice and 
bitterness and what proportion were contented 
citizens come out of their homes from curiosity 
to see what was happening. Occasionally a 
leaflet setting forth the strikers' grievances would 
appear mysteriously, struck off from the press 
of the Socialist paper — ^the one press which the 
strikers allowed to print. But it, too, shortly 



TiJ 



Strife and Confusion 255 

ceased operations as the government seized and 
suppressed it. 

Protection was offered to the offices of the 
foreign representatives, but I think none of us 
accepted it. We were warned that it was dan- 
gerous to go about in motors, so acute had class 
feeling grown, but I used mine steadily and had 
no trouble. Not even a stone was thrown at me. 
The hotels were well guarded by squads of sol- 
diers outside and inside throughout 'S.^e day and 
night. The soldier with his gun and long bayonet, 
who marched steadily up and down the square 
entrance-hall of the Bemerhof, gave me the 
first realization that there really might be an 
element of danger in the situation. It was hard 
to realize, because here again Switzerland re- 
minded one of a play. The crowds seemed so 
patient and good-natured, they might have been 
a stage mob, before the moment came to stir 
itself to violence. The bright-cheeked country- 
soldiers, with their horses and their guns and 
their becoming tin helmets designed by an artist, 
were charming to look at. They seemed to be- 
long to the old town with its medieval arcades 
and its stone-paved squares. They should have 
worn shining armor. But as they were, in their 
gray-green uniforms, they were a good make- 
shift. 

The situation, if there was real danger in it, 
was handled well by the authorities. For several 
nights the military bands played to the crowds, 



256 A Year as a Government Agent 

and the demonstration seemed to me to take on 
an air of celebrating rather than protesting. I 
walked about each evening among the crowd and 
stopped to talk to men who appeared to be strik- 
ers. It seemed to me that while the leaders of the 
strike may have been connected with the inter- 
national agitators and Bolshevists and may have 
received financial aid from them, the main body 
of strikers had no thought of a political uprising 
and would have hated more than anything else 
an overthrow of the government. One of the 
men I talked to was typical. He was a furniture- 
mover and he said that he worked all day at the 
hardest and heaviest of tasks, moving pianos and 
other big pieces ; that his hours were very long 
and his pay was totally inadequate to take care 
of his family, and had become more and more 
inadequate, as the prices had risen during the 
war. There was seldom a time when he and 
his family were not actually hungry. He wanted 
an eight-hour day and better wages. Although 
he did not want to overthrow the government, 
he thought there could be an improvement. It 
was not a real democracy — -not like ours in 
America, he said. He had a grievance against 
the seven Federal Councilors. Perhaps this was 
a sprout from a Bolshevik seed carefully sown. 
He believed that the proportional representa- 
tion in Parliament would undoubtedly help. I 
thought that he, as well as the others I talked to, 
were astonishingly moderate and friendly. It 



Strife and Confusion 257 

was difficult to picture such patient men flaring 
into violence. But perhaps the margin between 
such a demonstration and a revolution may be a 
narrower one than an onlooker like me is able 
to realize. On the part of the workers, a little 
more bitterness; on the part of the government, 
either a little more aggressiveness or a little weak- 
ness and nervousness, or an incident like a shot 
fired by an exasperated soldier, and the great 
crowd, with a determined leader at hand, might 
have surged into the Federal Palace — a revolu- 
tion to succeed or to fail. 

November nth was the day when the strike 
was renewed. We knew the armistice was to 
be signed that day, but we received no details 
of the signing. In Geneva and Lausanne, where 
the strike was less effective and where sympathy 
for the Entente was great, there were public 
celebrations. But in Berne the authorities were 
stem in their neutrality. In the midst of the 
crowds which gathered on the streets that night, 
because of the strike, I saw a handful — ten or 
twelve, perhaps — of the interned French war 
prisoners in their blue uniforms form a line, each, 
man with his hands on another man's shoulders, 
and wind through the crowd, singing the ''Mar- 
seillaise." It was a pitiful effort at celebrating 
the greatest war event in the history of their 
country. Another handful gathered in a little 
restaurant under the arcades, and they, too, 

sang the " Marseillaise " — ^what Frenchman could 
17 



25B A Year as a Government Agent 

resist it! And for this infraction of Swiss neu- 
trality they were arrested and punished by the 
Swiss or by the Canton Berne authorities. 

This week, when there was rejoicing in all the 
Entente countries, there was sadness as well as 
strife throughout Switzerland. Each day seemed 
longer than the one before. The strike con- 
tinued and the Spanish grippe broke out again 
in the most virulent form, and especially among 
the mobilized country boys. Seven or eight 
himdred of them died within a few days. School- 
houses and other public buildings were turned 
into hospitals, and the Swiss women, untrained 
in work outside of their homes, were called upon 
in this emergency not only to nurse the patients, 
but to organize and manage the hospitals. One 
of these women in Zurich told me that they had 
sighed for the help of American women who 
knew how to do things, and she told me of some 
of the difficulties they had to face because of 
their lack of experience. One little thing, which 
I remember because it seemed so natural an 
oversight, was that when the patients were 
brought in, imdressed, and put to bed, all of 
their clothes were sent to be washed or disin- 
fected and no one thought of keeping a record 
of any man's belongings ! How could they think 
of such a detail in their eager efforts to save 
lives? But when the men got well, each one 
wanted his own clothes, the shirt he liked, the 
shoes that fitted him — and there was only a 



Strife and Confusion 259 

great mass of unassorted, unidentified wearing- 
apparel. The Swiss ladies were distressed beyond 
measure at their own thoughtlessness and the 
resulting confusion. 

In our office there was, to a great extent, 
enforced idleness, because the mails did not come 
and the papers were not printed. Work on 
pamphlets ceased. Our wireless and telegraph 
service came through uncertainly, but we got it 
out as well as we could. I cabled to Washington 
on November 12th, recommending that all of 
our activities except the news service be aban- 
doned, and offered my resignation, suggesting 
adequate arrangements for the continuance with- 
out me of the committee's work, which was 
now so firmly established. The following day 
I repeated my resignation, because I was afraid 
I had not made my desire sufficiently emphatic. 
After an interval, answers came approving my 
suggestions, but refusing my resignation. I was 
told that my ''resignation would embarrass the 
work of the committee," and was asked "to 
stick like a good soldier." But the bottom had 
dropped out of it for me. I felt there was noth- 
ing more to be done that I could do better than 
others, and there would be no longer work 
enough to keep me busy and satisfied. 

The strike soon began to fail. Its end was 
hastened by the epidemic, which did not spare 
the strikers, and because the cities were depend- 
ent upon the country districts for much of their 



26o A Year as a Government Agent 

daily food-supply, and when trains did not run 
a large part of the necessities of life was cut off. 
For instance, prepared milk evidently was not 
in general use or available then in the Swiss 
cities, as it is in ours, and the fresh milk which 
had to be brought in on trains from even the 
nearest country districts could not be delivered. 
There were no horses or motors to move it. The 
babies especially suffered, we heard, and the 
babies of the strikers were not exempt. To 
meet this situation and save their own children, 
the strikers proposed to run one morning train 
each day into the cities, but the government 
stepped in and said either all trains or none. 
Before the end of the week the strike was over 
in Berne and a few days later the Olten com- 
mittee called it off in Zurich. I was given by a 
Swiss official a statement for publication in 
America, saying that the Olten strike committee 
had been forced to order the cessation of the 
strike without any concessions whatsoever being 
made by the government, and that people of 
all Switzerland, east as well as west, had imited 
to support the ancient democratic institutions 
of their country against the assaults of Russian 
Bolshevism. 

The Parliament, however, felt the force behind 
the demands of the strikers and appointed a 
committee to work out the details of an elec- 
tion to be held the following spring under the 
new system of proportional representation. It 



Strife and Confusion 261 

began on its own initiative to plan for other 
reforms which had been demanded. 

Telegraphic and postal communication was 
soon restored. The papers resumed their issues, 
the shops opened again, and everything seemed 
to return to normal conditions, but the strike 
left its trail throughout the country. One of the 
extreme Socialist or Bolshevist papers said, in 
the bitterness of defeat, that at least the epi- 
demic of grippe had been on the side of the 
workers and had revenged their wrongs by the 
heavy toll in death which it had exacted from 
the peasants who had been mobilized as soldiers. 
They openly rejoiced over their fellow-country- 
men who had died. The antagonism that ensued 
between the industrial and agricultural classes 
was extreme and will probably long remain to 
embitter Swiss life. 

I soon heard from Madame Schwimmer. She 
telegraphed, saying that the progress of her 
journey was very hard, but in spite of all diffi- 
culties she had been able to send President 
Wilson's appeal by courier to the National 
Coimcils and the respective national govern- 
ments of Vorralberg, Tyrol, Himgary, Rtmiania, 
Slovakia, German Himgary, Galicia, Poland, 
and Croatia. ''The widest publication," she 
said, *'has been obtained." On November 9th 
it was in all Austro-German papers. 

Doctor Kot, the Polish courier, she reported 
had agreed to send couriers immediately to 



262 A Year as a Government Agent 

Warsaw for the Polish National Council of 
Galicia, as the Liqiiidation Committee of Cra- 
cow; to the National Cotincil for Polish Silesia 
at Te^chen; to the Ukrainian National Coimcil 
at Lemberg. ''I can already inform you," she 
said, "that the appeal has been taken up every- 
where with great sympathy and much under- 
standing." 

Soon telegrams of acknowledgment and appre- 
ciation from the Coxmcils at Prague, Agram, and 
other capitals came to my office or to the lega- 
tion in Switzerland, to be forwarded to America. 

A week or ten days later Madame Schwimmer 
returned to Switzerland, and brought with her a 
number of strange-looking papers as samples of 
the publicity that the appeal had obtained. 

Shortly after her return she was appointed 
diplomatic representative to Switzerland of the 
new Himgarian Republic, the first woman to 
be appointed to such a post. She lived in the 
Bemerhof Hotel and I saw her occasionally. 
She suffered as all pioneers must suffer. She was 
the victim of jealousy on the part of the men 
who had hoped for her position and on the part 
of women who never under any circumstances 
could have obtained it. There was gossip of the 
pettiest kind about every little thing she did. 
Undoubtedly Madame Schwimmer felt that her 
distinguished position demanded elegant sur- 
roundings and a fashionable appearance. Per- 
haps she felt that in the diplomatic game of 



Strife and Confusion 263 

Europe such things have an importance and a 
weight, and I think they still may have. Perhaps 
she enjoyed them herself. At any rate, she had 
a handsome apartment at the Bemerhof, a 
luxurious motor, and a well-cut fur coat. What 
gossip raged about the purchase of that coat! 
Why shoiild she, the gossips asked, clothe her- 
self in expensive furs and live as she did, when 
there was such suffering in her country? If she 
had gone about shabbily and lived simply, un- 
doubtedly the gossips who wanted to complain 
would have said that she was disgracing her 
post and would have compared her unfavorably 
with her distinguished and fashionable prede- 
cessors. But petty gossip, although it imdoubt- 
edly told against her, was the least of the trou- 
bles this pioneer had to face. Her connection 
with the Ford peace ship seemed to stand as an 
ever-growing reproach. It was said that in 
America she was looked upon with hatred, and 
to America alone, her country — Hungary — ^must 
turn for help. Switzerland, ever proud to pro- 
claim itself the oldest republic, balked in the 
twentieth century at accepting a woman diplo- 
matic representative. They disregarded intelli- 
gence, energy, experience — any and every qual- 
ity — and decided that masculinity in itself was 
what they wanted! Our own Minister, too, ob- 
jected to her, although he, in his official position, 
could have no relation whatever with the diplo- 
matic representative of a country still technically 



264 A Year as a Government Agent 

at war with us. But what was the world coming 
to, in the eyes of a Southern reactionary, if the 
very distinguished career of diplomacy with all 
its ancient traditions — a, career of which he him- 
self was a member — opened its ranks to women ! 
Madame Schwimmer was a woman, and that 
in itself should have ruled her out. But there 
was another objection, too. One day when I 
had called on Mr. Stovall in his large and com- 
fortable office, on some business matter, he de- 
tained me as I stood at his desk, about to leave. 
He wanted to make it plain to me that he dis- 
approved of Madame Schwimmer' s appoint- 
ment. By his manner he seemed to hold me 
responsible for it. At least she and I were both 
women! He said she was neither an Austrian 
nor a Hungarian, but of a "third race." His 
tone was reminiscent of the time when suf- 
fragists were spoken of as members of a ** third 
sex." That is a time so long ago that most of 
us have happily forgotten it or have never known 
it, but Mr. Stovall, I suspect, could still be 
tempted to use the term. When he spoke of 
Madame Schwimmer as belonging to a "third 
race" I knew it meant something he did not 
like, but I did not at first know what it was. I 
stood and looked out of his window on to the 
terrace and lawns and distant fields while I 
htirriedly ran over in my mind the many races 
of the Balkans and wondered which he might 
mean. I said: "She isn't a German. Do you 



Strife and Confusion 265 

mean she is a Magyar or a Czech? In fact, she 
is only a bourgeois Hungarian Jewish woman." 
''That's it!" he said. Madame Schwimmer, in 
addition to being a woman, is a Jewess — ^an 
unforgivable combination to so distinguished a 
diplomat as our American Minister. He may 
have foreseen the time when peace would be 
concluded between Hungary and his own coun- 
try, and undoubtedly the prospect of receiving 
her as a confrere was not pleasant to him. "We 
ought to do better than that," he said. 

In the mean time, gossiped about and schemed 
against, Madame Schwimmer worked away 
night and day establishing a Himgarian publicity 
office and trying to organize a competent diplo- 
matic and consular service from the broken rem- 
nants left from the old Austro-Hungarian regime. 
She was busy with a thousand and one things 
of which only so active a person could have 
thought. She worked imremittingly to reach the 
various Allied representatives, through them 
trying to send to the Peace Conference informa- 
tion that would show the precarious condition 
of the democratic government established in 
Hungary, and to warn them of the dangers of 
Bolshevism which would attend its overthrow. 
Night and day she was busy working with all 
her might to obtain the assistance she felt her 
country needed. 

There she was, a storm-center, busy and 
lonely, when I left Switzerland. Weeks later I 



266 A Year as a Government Agent 

saw, with a sigh, that she had resigned her post. 
The opposition had proved too much for her. 
Perhaps she became convinced that some one 
else — Si man — could serve her country better 
than she. How her strong pride must have 
revolted at her defeat! Undoubtedly her prob- 
lems were different from mine, but no one could 
measure the bitterness of her disappointment 
better than I, who the previous March had 
cabled my own resignation rather than be 
guided by the fears and fallacies of our diplo- 
matic corps. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE END OF THE YEAR 

r^URING this time my attention was centered 
^-^ upon going home. When the cold had come 
again in Switzerland, and the snow lay again 
upon the groimd, it seemed almost incredible to 
me that I was still there, because all summer I 
had been so sure that the war would be soon over 
and 1 free to leave. Now the war was won and 
another winter was here, but I was still held 
at my post. There was no need for it. My 
leaving could not embarrass the Committee on 
Public Information. A successor could easily be 
fotmd — some one, perhaps, released from other 
war-work. There was nothing difficult about 
the work of our office now. It could go on me- 
chanically. There was no longer an enemy 
propaganda to combat or a blind enemy to 
instruct. The German papers themselves were 
full of praise of President Wilson and of things 
American. The Swiss press, too, was imre- 
strained in its admiration. When President Wil- 
son started on his first trip to Europe, which 
caused such violent protests here in America, one 



268 A Year as a Government Agent 

pro-German German-Swiss paper headed its 
leading article, ** The Savior Sails Upon the Sea." 

Of course the news was not all one-sided. 
There was an effort on the part of other countries 
to exaggerate the political discord in America, 
and to point to President Wilson's waning in- 
fluence here. The propaganda struggle tiimed 
into new channels, inspired by after-the-war 
commercial rivalries; and in this new struggle 
I felt I had no part. 

The demand for American news had become 
insistent. Commercial agencies could enter the 
field and supply it as a business proposition. 
Yes, my work was done, and appeals to me ''to 
stick like a good soldier" fell on deaf ears. I 
detennined to go. But I must wait a little, be- 
cause the heads of the foreign work of the Com- 
mittee on Public Information were leaving Amer- 
ica to establish themselves in Paris. I shoiild 
see them there and talk over many details be- 
fore I left. 

My desire to leave, strong as it had been for 
months, was strengthened now by a new situa- 
tion that arose — a situation from which in itself 
I wanted to escape. 

After the armistice with Austria-Himgary was 
signed the agents and representatives of the 
countries east of Switzerland, some of which 
were technically still our enemies, would come 
to me constantly with stories of the suffering 
and wrongs of their countries and of the griev- 



The End of the Year 269 

ances each one had against the other. Un- 
doubtedly these men hoped that I wotild pass 
on their stories to more important authorities. 
Most painstakingly I would explain that I was 
not in a position even to give to any one in 
authority information that came to me, no mat- 
ter how vitally interesting. I would tell them, 
over and over again, that my only work in 
Switzerland was to gain publicity for American 
news ; that I sent back to America no reports of 
any sort, secret or otherwise, except as to my 
own work. But they would not believe it. They 
were so trained in secret methods that it seemed 
impossible for them to imderstand; it was, in 
fact, plainly incredible to them that any govern- 
ment agent or representative could be doing 
merely what he claimed to be doing. Since I 
said I was the director of American publicity in 
Switzerland, then I must be, in reality, something 
else. So, in spite of my protests, they kept com- 
ing to me. Or, it may have been, if they did be- 
lieve me in the end, that they felt driven to talk 
to any one from America — the Land of Promise. 
In the same way they went with their stories and 
appeals to the Red Cross representatives. 

These interviews were a painful experience to 
me. You can see how it would affect any one 
to hear of suffering upon which he had no right 
to comment, to which he had hardly a right to 
listen, even if it were suffering by enemies in 
righteous payment of crimes, 



2 70 A Year as a Government Agent 

Vienna was starving, or about to starve, in 
the winter of 191 8-19. Austria complained that 
Hungary had food, but wouldn't share it. Hun- 
gary asked. How could she? She had no way of 
moving the food which she had. She needed coal 
for transportation as well as for her industries, 
or her own people would starve. Budapest, it- 
self, they said, was threatened with as great a 
food shortage as that from which Vienna was 
suffering. An American food representative 
then in Switzerland said he did not believe 
that Htmgary was speaking in good faith. If 
she were really willing to share her food with 
Austria, as she protested, the lack of coal need 
not stop her. She could cut down her forests for 
fuel. Hadn't America shown the way? We 
had burned the crops from our fields as fuel 
when coal ran short here, he said. The Hun- 
garian agents explained that their forests were 
in the outlying mountain districts. The trees 
had not only to be cut down, but sawed, then 
transported and distributed, before they would 
be useful as fuel. The transportation system 
in Hungary had broken down and coal was 
needed to get it started again. The Czecho- 
slovaks had something to say to this, because 
the coal had to come from Germany through 
the territory they held. Such tangled claims to 
consideration ! And the men who talked of them 
were not novices in pleading. They were artists 
in presenting their Qountry^s problems and they 



The End of the Year 271 

made the map of eastern Europe become a liv- 
ing thing for me. 

I remember in particular a man who had been 
in the Austrian Military Intelligence Service 
before that country's surrender, and who seemed 
himself to experience every pang of himger and 
of human suffering which was endured in Vienna 
and in all the other places of which he told me. 
To look at him, you would never suspect such 
dramatic power as he possessed. He was a 
heavy, stolid-looking man with bushy eyebrows 
and small, grayish side-whiskers; a burly, mid- 
dle-aged military man. He came to see me 
several times and pleaded, in a mixture of broken 
English and rapid German, in behalf of all the 
h\mgry and suffering. One day he talked of 
what Serbia, his country's enemy, had endured. 
He called me to the map which himg on the 
wall in my office opposite the long table where 
I sat. He pointed with a pencil to a spot on the 
plains in the north of Serbia, and he said this 
was territory, watered by a great river, naturally 
fertile and beautiful, that had been fought upon 
over and over again until the desolation there 
was beyond one's imagination to picture. He 
told of its being occupied by Austrian troops. 
In cases of military occupation, he said, there 
generally were left of the country's inhabitants 
only the women and children and old men. But 
here, he said, there were no men at all. They 
had all been killed or had gone away to fight— 



272 A Year as a Government Agent 

even the very oldest. The women and children 
only were there. He said their condition was piti- 
able, for, although they tried to work the fields, 
the destruction had been so complete that they 
could not wring a living from the land. Their 
implements had been destroyed, their homes 
burned, and their men killed; and he spoke of 
the bitter discouragement, the bitter suffering 
they must have endured — these women who had 
tried tinder unimaginable hardships to feed 
themselves and their children; these women 
who had lost all of their men in battle. Then 
he went on to tell me that in occupied countries 
the invading armies counted upon living some- 
what on the land, but here they cotild not — there 
was nothing for them. The Austrian soldiers, 
he said, who were quartered there were not 
generously rationed, because Austria itself was 
short of food. But they were so touched by 
the pitiable condition of these enemy women 
and children that they made a practice of shar- 
ing with them what little rations they had. 
The Austrians, he said, were a kind-hearted 
people, not cruel and hard, as we believe the Ger- 
mans to be. His story, of course, was planned 
to show the Austrians in a kindly light. But he 
drew a vivid picture of it all. I had known almost 
nothing of Serbia, and whenever I had heard 
of it it had always seemed very far away. In 
Berne I had met the handsome Serbian Minister 
and his beautiful wife several times. I had dined 



The End of the Year 273 

with them once and the conversation^had 
touched interestingly upon many poHtical and 
social questions, but it was left to an enemy 
propagandist to stir my heart for their coimtry. 

The other cotmtries, too, all had their griefs 
and fears and vague hopes. I heard of the ter- 
rible oppression of Rumania. I was told of 
Transylvania's fears; of the Tyrol and its trou- 
bles. The new Bulgarian Minister called upon 
me, but his manner was constrained; and it 
was from others that I heard chiefly of what 
Bulgaria, too, was enduring. There were Let- 
tonia and Lithuania and many others. Some- 
times I lost patience over the stories and com- 
plaints that came to me, especially from our 
enemy cotmtries, because, with Belgium's fate so 
vividly before us, the wrongs of other conquered 
nations faded into insignificance. 

I heard these stories with an ever-growing 
reluctance. The impression they made upon me 
was painful. It was not only of suffering because 
of the war, but of an indescribable confusion; 
of a great failiH*e of men in one section of the 
world to govern themselves in the light of civili- 
zation. Political and economic principles in the 
stress of defeat were scrapped. All was in chaos. 
One of the chief failiu-es of these cotmtries was 
that they had not produced men of constructive 
minds, who could cope with the ruin about them, 
who had the strength to bring order out of the 

chaos. Again I was struck with the need of 
18 



2 74 ^ Year as a Government Agent 

men big enough for leadership in so great a 
world's crisis. Failing outstanding leaders, a 
higher general average of the whole people must 
be the salvation of self -governing nations. But 
how was it here? Leaders and people alike 
seemed totally inadequate to control or direct 
the situation. They had no confidence in them- 
selves or in each other. Everywhere there were 
men and groups struggling for power. In each 
country there were rival factions of petty men. 
And each little faction looked to the conquering 
Allies for a token of recognition, a little support 
to strengthen its position over its own rivals at 
home. The struggle was bitter for any scrap of 
recognition, no matter how small. If President 
Wilson could even mention in a speech on an- 
other subject this or that man, it would be 
something for the man's faction to seize and mag- 
nify! The struggle went on, the confusion grew. 
But to these coimtries in their dark and diffi- 
cult circumstances there seemed to be one solu- 
tion to which they all turned — a League of 
Nations. To them it was to be a higher power 
that would see justice administered throughout 
the world and would protect small nations from 
greedy neighbors ; a means of justice to those to 
whom the great nations want to be just and to 
those to whom they do not want to be just. 
They came to look to it as the one power to 
bring order out of the chaos and to make the 
world happy. It was to be the magic solution 



The End of the Year 275 

of all otherwise insoluble problems, and Presi- 
dent Wilson was the mighty champion of this 
great ideal. 

Boundless hopes of a new world order were 
built upon a League of Nations in the confu- 
sion of late 191 8, there where all the world met 
in Switzerland. There seemed to be no suspicion 
then that, after all, it might prove a disappoint- 
ment, since it was to be conceived and put into 
execution by mere human beings, working out 
the biggest problems of government, not in 
calmness and with an altruistic vision, but at a 
time when passions were hot and hatreds bitter. 

But these were problems with which I had 
nothing to do. I could not help solve them. I 
wanted to escape from hearing of them all; 
from the pressure which was put upon me by 
the visits of the representatives, official and un- 
official, of all these struggling cotmtries, who 
seemed to drift all in a jumble at one time or 
another into my office. 

At the end of November I felt the greatest 
relief when I heard that the officials from the 
Committee on Public Information were arriving 
in Paris. I went there to meet them. I found 
they still wanted to keep me in Switzerland, but 
I was firm in my determination to leave. I 
agreed, however, to go back once more to Berne 
and wait there a reasonable time for my suc- 
cessor. 

On this visit Paris had seemed strange to me 



276 A Year as a Government Agent 

with its long rows of cannon up and down the 
Champs - Elysees, with its parades and gay 
crowds. Its griefs were forgotten for the moment 
in open rejoicing. I felt a stranger, although I, 
too, rejoiced that the great war was over at 
last. I hurried my arrangements and went back 
to Berne at the earliest moment to await my 
final release. 

I remember that last lonely return to Switzer- 
land very vividly. Though hostilities had ceased, 
the French frontier into Switzerland was closed 
and I was the only passenger on the little train 
that ran between Bellegarde and Geneva. There 
at the station, when I got off the train, was 
Leon, my French interne chauffeur, to welcome 
me with an air of excitement. His blue eyes were 
sparkling and I asked him what had happened. 
Nothing — only that madame was back again. 
It had been my first absence since he had come 
into my service, and life had probably seemed 
dull to him with his active employer away. I 
am going to tell you about Leon, because he, 
with his boyish eagerness, is one of the vivid 
memories of my last days in Switzerland. 

When I had returned from America to Switz- 
erland in June I found that a motor had be- 
come a necessity for my work, because the train 
service in Switzerland had almost ceased to 
exist. There were no Sunday trains at all. Even 
motors in Switzerland were allowed only to offi- 
cials, diplomats, and physicians. I waited for 



The End of the Year 277 

one to be assigned to me from the American 
army, but finally I was driven to buy one of the 
few second-hand cars obtainable in Switzerland. 
Nothing later than a 191 4 car existed and the 
prices charged were enormous. I chose an open 
Fiat that could take me well over the Swiss 
mountains. The army provided gasolene. I 
applied to the Interned French Prisoners' Bureau 
for a chauffeur and Leon was sent to me. He 
was a big, broad-shouldered, blond Frenchman 
with bright blue eyes and a little yellow mus- 
tache; only twenty-four or five years old. He 
had been a taxicab driver in Paris, he said, boast- 
fully, before the war. His pride in his former 
occupation seemed to me excessive, although 
any one who has been in Paris knows that there 
must be a big element of danger and chance in 
it; and it probably stood to him as the epitome 
of valor and recklessness. After he was mo- 
bilized he drove a staff motor. In the retreat 
of 1 9 14 the General Staff for which he was driv- 
ing was surprised one morning at daybreak by 
the approach of the Germans. The officers of 
the staff crossed a bridge, too small for automo- 
biles, and blew it up, leaving the chauffeurs to 
destroy their motors and save themselves, if 
they could. They succeeded in destroying the 
motors, Leon said, but were captured themselves. 
That was his story. For three years he had been 
a prisoner in Germany before he was interned 
in Switzerland. There he had been for a year, 



278 A Year as a Government Agent 

making bead necklaces or wooden boxes or some 
of the useless things that prisoners were allowed 
to make. I asked why they were not trained 
to real work, and I was told that it would inter- 
fere with the labor situation in Switzerland. 

When Leon was sent to me I explained that 
the place would not be an easy one. He would 
not expect easy work, he said. Hadn' t he served 
in the French army? Wasn't he a sergeant? 
The first night I employed him I started off to 
Basel and Zurich. All went well tintil Leon was 
to come for me one morning in Zurich at four 
o'clock. I had an appointment in my Berne 
office at nine. My Swiss friends with whom I 
was staying insisted upon getting up in the cold 
and the dark to see me off. There was no motor. 
We sat shivering at the table in the dining-room 
and waited. Finally we telephoned the hotel 
where Leon was staying and foimd he had been 
sleeping soimdly — so soundly he couldn't be 
waked. He came for me hours late. Would a 
French employer have discussed the matter 
there and then? Leon seemed to expect it and 
was ready with excuses, but I made no comment. 
That afternoon, in Berne, I told him I was not 
going to keep him. My work was important; 
I could not miss appointments. I needed a 
chauffeur who could always be on time. His 
face was horror-stricken. He was full of excuses. 
He must have felt that he could not go back to 
the bead necklaces. He stood there glued to the 



The End of the Year 279 

spot, and told me lie had had a military training ; 
that he himself had been in command of men. 
He could be on time hereafter and he asked me 
to try him just once, once more, and he would 
never again be late. I relented, and he never 
was late again. I think he loved his work. He 
hated to be left behind the night I took the 
President's message to the Austrian frontier. 
He had been driving all day, but he was sure, he 
said, he could stay awake and drive all night, 
and the next day, too, and the night after. He 
hovered about the hotel entrance with his 
motor until we had left, hoping to the last to be 
taken along. 

The night trips must have seemed full of a 
rare romance to him; when we went through 
the sleeping Swiss villages, quiet as death, he 
would take off the muffler and blow his siren 
and put on full speed. I would lean forward and 
say through the noise, ''Really, Leon, you 
mustn't do that." But at the next village he 
would do it again. Did he picture to himself, 
with a thrill, the Swiss turning over in their soft 
beds and wondering what adventurous spirits 
were abroad at such an hour? 

We seldom talked. I was always preoccupied 
and it must have taken courage for him to ap- 
proach the great subject he had in mind. He had 
heard I was going to take Hedwig back to 
America with me and he wanted to go, too — to 
the Land of Promise. I explained that in Amer- 



28o A Year as a Government Agent 

ica I was merely a private citizen and lived in 
New York quietly as other people do. There 
were no night or early-morning tours. There, 
my life was orderly. Perhaps he did not quite 
believe that a person so erratic as I must have 
seemed to him could lead a life without excite- 
ment. He wanted to go. He wanted it with the 
same determination he had shown over staying 
when I was going to discharge him. He did not 
know a word of English, not one. I imagined 
an encotinter between him and a Fifth Avenue 
traffic policeman, and I saw that there would be 
difficulties in store for us. But he said they were 
nothing. He said he would learn English very 
easily. He knew he could, because it was exactly 
like German! and in his three years in Germany 
he had learned a little German. It was very little : 
''Lincksr' ''Rechtr' ''Wie weitr' was about 
all he knew. He bought a phrase-book and 
started to study. Well, I gave in and agreed to 
take him. He showed the greatest enterprise in 
making his arrangements. When he met me in 
Geneva, on my return from Paris, he had it all 
planned out. The French soldiers interned in 
Switzerland were now being sent back to France. 
I was to have him demobilized in Switzerland 
and take him back to America with me. But I 
told him he would have to stay and drive my 
successor. That worried him a little, but I think 
he meant not to do it. I shotild not have been 
surprised to find him a stowaway on my steamer. 



The End of the Year 281 

What he proposed to do was not easy. We had 
to struggle with endless French regulations and 
red-tape. When objections were made he was 
incredulous. He was confident, if I would only 
try, I cotild overcome every obstacle. But in 
spite of his enterprise, in spite of the many ap- 
pointments which he himself would make for 
me with French officers, his plans failed, and 
about the middle of December it seemed that 
he must return to his regiment in France. When 
I told him this final decision I was struck by 
the look on his face. For the first time there 
was no hope — ^no incredulous smile. He did not 
argue. What was the matter with the boy, I 
wondered. I told him that when he was finally 
demobilized he could come over to America. I 
would pay his way and make his arrangements 
then. Yes, he nodded his head. I asked in the 
office if anything was wrong with Leon, he 
seemed so quiet. I heard that for three days he 
had been ill with the Spanish grippe. He had 
seen a doctor, who had told him to go to bed. 
But he wouldn't, although he had then a tem- 
perature of 104°. Was he afraid that I would 
think that he, a French soldier, was shirking? 
Had I been too severe with him when he had 
failed before? I was going early next morning — 
a Saturday — to Geneva. I told him to go to 
bed at once and I'd get some other chauffeur to 
drive me. He protested that he himself would 
be well enough in the morning to go. He would 



282 A Year as a Government Agent 

be there at the hotel early with the car, he said. 
He was so positive that he almost convinced me, 
although I had felt his burning hand. But in the 
morning he did not come and I started off a little 
late with another chauffeur. On Monday, when 
I came back, I found that Leon had been taken 
from his boarding-house to a hospital. The 
epidemic was waning and the hospitals were less 
crowded. That evening, after my work was over, 
I went to see him and found him in a clean and 
beautifully appointed place, a few kilometers 
outside of Berne. I had had the grippe myself 
recently, so I was allowed, after much talk and 
many protests on the part of the hospital authori- 
ties, to go to the ward where the severe cases 
were isolated. I was told he was very ill. There 
was already grave doubt as to his recovery. 
But he didn't look ill — not as little Hedwig had 
looked. His bright blue eyes were brighter than 
ever, his clear skin was clearer. He recognized 
me at once and was glad to see me. But he was 
delirious and told me I had come just in time to 
save him. Why had I been so long? he asked. 
He thought, poor boy, that he was imprisoned 
again and in some danger and that I could 
rescue him. The next evening I went again; he 
smiled his recognition, but already he was too 
weak to speak intelligibly. That night he died. 
Under the seat of the motor we found a little 
leather case, and in it was a bit of dried edel- 
weiss and a photograph of a German soldier — a 



The End of the Year 283 

boy like Leon, himself; some one who had been 
kind to him in his three years' imprisonment; 
some one who, in spite of wars and of official 
commands, had become a friend. Poor Leon ! 

In the mean time my successor, Mr. Guy 
Crosswell Smith, had arrived, and the day of 
my leaving was soon determined. Before going 
I took him to see many of the men I had grown 
to know in Switzerland, who had helped our 
work in one way or another. We went to Basel, 
where we saw the editors of the National Zeitung, 
one of whom, an Austrian, had idealized Presi- 
dent Wilson and wanted more than anything 
in the world to see him, merely to clasp his 
hand if he should come to Switzerland. There 
we saw the editors of the Easier Nachrichten^ 
who had stood so stanchly by the pro-German 
Colonel Egli. We went to Zurich and saw other 
editors and authors and men of affairs. We 
motored through the country and stopped at 
medieval castles, to see statesmen and officials. 
One old castle, built in the midst of a little vil- 
lage, miles off the main road, high on a hillside 
overlooking a broad, snow-covered valley, seemed 
to me a glimpse of another age. There was some- 
thing fairylike and homelike, too, in its charm. 
Here a statesman lived in modem comfort, sur- 
roimded by old traditions, working over great 
plans whereby Switzerland should nobly profit 
by all she had learned during the war from other 
coimtries. 



284 A Year as a Government Agent 

We saw professors and students in their quiet 
studies in quaint, small towns. We saw Doctor 
Laur, called the ''peasants' Christ," a little, 
bearded man with luminous eyes and gentle 
manner, whose dignity and charm would have 
raade him grace any rank of life. 

On our return to Berne we saw President 
Calonder and other officials and statesmen. 
These men had all been kind in some way — 
simple and himian. I recalled little incidents of 
kindness one after another. 

There was Doctor Buhler, the editor of the 
Bund, I was grateful to him because he had 
helped me one day during the strike, when a 
message had come to the starving nations, east 
of Switzerland, to tell them that Hoover was 
going to send food to them. The telegraph-wires 
were down, the trains were not running. I 
wanted publicity for the message at once. I 
wanted to send it out over the Swiss wireless. 
But the Swiss wireless, which was used only for 
military purposes, was in charge of the Swiss 
General Staff, still determinedly pro-German. I 
coiild not approach them myself. I went to 
Doctor Buhler and asked him to arrange it for 
me now, at once ! I persuaded him to come with 
me in my motor, although it was the busiest 
time of his day — ^his paper was just going to 
press. I took him to the Federal Palace to see 
the President and to see General Wille of the 
General Staff, and it was all done. 



The End of the Year 285 

Doctor Laur, too, had shown himself surpris- 
ingly just and liberal. In the early days I had 
complained to him of the bitterness against the 
United States of some of the editors of agri- 
cultural papers. They held the United States 
responsible, by its entrance into the war, for 
the war's continuance. Their attitude had 
seemed to me imneutral. He had reproved the 
writers of whom I had complained, and the 
whole question had been taken up by the agri- 
ctiltural societies and resulted in a better feeling 
toward us, I felt. 

Not only with the people I had known, but 
with people I had seen every day, I had had 
some friendly contact; little human bonds had 
grown up that were hard to break. The couriers 
at the hotel had all liked Sonny and had always 
had a friendly word to say to him as they 
opened the doors for his coming and going. 
The head waiter himself had always fed him. 
The concierge had been a friend of Hedwig and 
had grieved with me when she died. 

Now, at the moment when my great desire 
was to be gratified, when I was to start on my 
way home, I was filled with the greatest friendli- 
ness for these people among whom I had lived 
and worked — ^with whom I had not always 
agreed, but whom I had grown to understand 
and like more and more as the months went by. 
Every one, from the President to the simplest 
peasant, seemed a friend at the hour of my leav- 



286 A Year as a Government Agent 

ing, and I asked them all — statesmen, couriers, 
concierge, head waiter — to come to see rne if 
they should ever come to America. Tears were 
not far from our eyes when I said good-by. 

It was Christmas Day when Sonny and I 
started home alone together. And now we are 
here, in safety and comfort — ^happy in our own 
home. In looking back over the year with its 
record of loneliness and trials and hard work 
and its rewards of accomplishment, with its 
friendships and its losses, it seems to me a very- 
crowded, far-away period. I look at Sonny 
sometimes and I like to feel that, when no one 
else notices, he understands the smile that the 
memory of some of our Swiss experiences brings 
to me, as well as the tear that sometimes comes 
when I think of the things that wrung our hearts 
in those days that he and I lived through to- 
gether away from home. 

A friend of mine who, like me, is unused to 
writing, but who has written a much-read book 
of his diplomatic experiences, tells me that the 
end of such a book is the most difficult part to 
write, for there you must draw your conclusions. 

But I am not going to end by drawing an^^ 
conclusions from this record of my year as a 
government agent. They seem to me either too 
obvious or too confused. I shall simply leave 
the record as it is, as accurate and honest as I 
can make it, to speak for itself. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX I 

Washington D. C. 7.38 P.M. Dec. 24, 1917. 

Mrs. Norman Whitehouse, 
118 East 56th St., New York 

Agree to all requests and ideas as outlined in your 
letters. Engage passage earliest moment and come 
Washington Friday for Passports credits and full in- 
structions. [Sgd] George Creel. 

8.18 P.M. 

APPENDIX II 

George Creel, Chairman 
The Secretary of State 
The Secretary of War 
The Secretary of the Navy. 

Committee on Public Information 
Washington, D. C. 

Dec. 31st, 1917. 
Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, 
Addressed. 

Please consider this your formal appointment to be 
representative of the Committee on Public Information 
19 



290 A Year as a Government Agent 

in Switzerland, with headquarters at Berne. Your 
activities are to he independent in so far as every funda- 
mental decision is concerned, hut you are, of course, to 
advise with the American Legation at Berne, and main- 
tain at all times a close and understanding contact. 

Please use this letter in approaching the American 
Ambassador, in Paris, the American Minister, in 
Berne, officials of the French Government in France 
and Switzerland. The State Department is cahling 
both the Embassy in Paris, and the Legation in Berne, 
informing them of your departure so that they will he 
prepared for your arrival. 
,;, Believe me, 

;vf/i^^''^ Very sincerely, 

[Sgd] George Creel, 
^'^^'^ ^^ Chairman. 



V 



•1 A" 



APPENDIX III 

Telegram Received January 23, 12 P.M. 

Washington, Jan. 22nd, igi8. 
Amemhassy — Paris. 

30QQ January 22 7 P.M. Please give following to 
Mrs. Norman Whitehouse now in Paris or soon may 
arrive en route Switzerland. Following is paraphrase 
of cable from American Legation Berne quote January 
ijth. period. Norman Whitehouse' s Mission for propa- 
ganda purposes as announced through Havas still being 
discussed by Germanophile press it is pointed out by 
press that United States grain is needed by Switzerland 
but instead is to receive words press further stated that 



Appendices 291 

inasmuch as it is President Wilson's policy to try to 
bring about internal disorder in Germany the Swiss 
Government should not put up with such efforts in 
Switzerland stop. Paragraph It seems to me extremely 
important that I should be authorized to make formal 
statement denying intentions of American Government 
to establish propaganda bureau as Whitehouse's name 
has been mentioned it is important that he should 
not come period. Propaganda we undertake should be 
done in the quietest way possible and without previous 
announcement by press period Wilson end quote. Fol- 
lowing reply being cabled today quote It has been freely 
stated in the Swiss Press that a Mr. Norman White- 
house is coming to Switzerland from the United States \ 
for the purpose of conducting a campaign of propa- 
ganda with object to influence Swiss opinion these un- 
true statements are doubtlessly based upon the fact that 
Mrs. Nor^nan Whitehouse has been selected by a De- 
partment of the Government of the United States to visit i 
France, Switzerland and England for the purpose of 
studying conditions relating to women and children 
period Mrs. Whitehouse was Chairman of the New 
York State Equal Suffrage Campaign and it was as a 
result of her leadership that the Male Electorate of this 
Commonwealth gave the vote to the women period It is 
not now and never has been the policy of the United 
States to conduct persuasive activities in any foreign 
country period It relies entirely upon frank and open 
presentation of its aims and objects and the secret and 
corrupt methods of its enemies have never been at- 
tempted and will not be end quote, 

Polk Acting. 
GWS/H.MLB 



292 A Year as a Government Agent 

APPENDIX IV 

Jan. 2jth. 

Secstate for Creel quote see cable from Wilson Berne to 
State Department Jan. 15, also answer from Polk 
stating object of my appointment to investigate condition 
women and children. Copies both cables sent to Em- 
bassy here for my information. No previous announce- 
ment of my appointment cabled as per your letter to me 
December 31st. Confident you will insist State De- 
partment cables correction to Berne Legation and Em- 
bassy here misstatement of purpose of my appointment. 
Notice Wilson mentions hostility Germanophile Press. 
Our work legitimate. Cannot work under false pre- 
tenses. French & English Publicity Committees meet 
no hostility from the authorities. French Committee 
here exceedingly helpful. Leave tonight for Berne. 



APPENDIX V 

Paraphrase of telegram received through the Paris 
Embassy from Department of State dated January 26. 

The Department authorizes you to inform Mrs. 
Whitehouse who has proceeded to Berne from Paris 
that the cablegram from the Department describing the 
nature of her mission, telegraphed to Paris for the in- 
formation of Mrs. Whitehouse and to your Legation 
was sent from Mr. Creel. The cablegram from Mrs. 
Whitehouse under date of January 2j has just reached 
the Department and been forwarded to Mr. Creel for 
appropriate action. Meanwhile, please inform Mrs. 



Appendices 293 

Whitehouse that she should make no statement. ''Polk 
Acting:' 



APPENDIX VI 

Embassy of the 
United States of America 

Paris, February 4th, igi8. 

Mrs. Norman Whitehouse, 

Hotel Vendome, 

Paris. 

Dear Mrs. Whitehouse, 

I confirm to you the telegram which I showed you this 
morning, sent to the Embassy by the Department of 
State and quoting a telegram sent to the American Lega- 
tion at Berne by the Committee on Public Information. 
This telegram was to the effect that it should be explained 
to you that the Department' s instruction of January 
22nd was dictated by necessity, but constituted no 
change in your instructions. It further stated that you 
are to institute your work as agreed upon, but to talk it 
over with Mr. Hugh Wilson before making any public 
announcement. 

The telegram to this Embassy requested further that 
you be informed that the message referred to in the tele- 
gram which you sent through this Embassy when you 
were last in Paris, stating the object of your appoint- 
ment, was sent at the request of Mr. Creel. 

Very truly yours, 

[Sgd] Robt. M. Bliss. 



294 A Year as a Government Agent 

APPENDIX VII 

Feb. I2th. 
''For Mrs. Whitekotise from Committee on Public 
Information. Quote Motion Picture Campaign leaving 
February ijth accompanied by operator stop Cable 
news being improved according your suggestions stop 
You are to receive service and distribute and not Wilson 
stop ( ) service now mailed you direct Paris 

representative sailing thirteenth and will connect you 
( ) stop Until films arrive suggest quiet 

survey of field without ( ) stop trying arrange 

World for exchange articles stop Cable needs end 
quote. 

APPENDIX VIII 

Legation of the 
United States of America 

Berne, February 12, igi8. 

Mrs. Norman Whitehouse, 

Hotel Bellevue, 

Berne. 

Dear Mrs. Whitehouse: 

I enclose a reading of a telegram which was re- 
ceived last night for you from the Committee on Public 
Information. You will note several spaces in the Tele- 
gram; these represent places where the reading was 
mutilated in transmission and which are impossible to 
decipher. If you consider any of these missing groups 
essential, we can wire back to have them repeated. 



Appendices 295 

In view of Mr. Creel's instructions to you, I do not 
think that I need further instructions before turning 
over the press service to you when you desire to handle 
it, in case it is still coming to the Legation. 

This telegram arrived in blue code, which is only 
semi-confidential, and therefore I am giving you a true 
reading. 

Sincerely, 

[Sgd] Hugh R. Wilson. 
Enclosure: 
Reading of telegram. 



APPENDIX IX 

Paraphrase. 

American Legation 
Berne 

The Secretary of State 
Washington. 

26pp February 8, y P.M. A frank discussion of 
her situation has been had between Mrs. Whitehouse 
and myself. By publication of Communique authorized 
by Department's 1379 January 22 / 7 P.M. she believes 
that she is much hampered. In relation to the manner of 
carrying out this class of work she and I differ radically. 
To promote good understanding between the two coun- 
tries by official publicity, she feels that a frank and open 
effort is not open to criticism. 

Acknowledged governmental activities in propaganda 
are highly inadvisable in my judgment. German propa- 
ganda, since the commencement of the war, has flooded 



296 A Year as a Government Agent 

Switzerland to such an extent that in this country public 
opinion in a natural reaction turns away from whatever 
tends toward that direction. Both the French and Brit- 
ish Missions here recognize this fact. 

After talking with Mrs. Whitehouse, [an Allied pub- 
licity agent] has called on me already. The effect which 
acknowledged official propaganda would make, he looks 
upon with apprehension and called to express his ap- 
prehension to me. Service de Press is the way his agency 
is known. The collection of press items from German 
papers ostensibly constitutes its labors. 

The Neue Korrespondenz, a Swiss Organization of 
which a Swiss is the head, passes to the press such news 
as the French wish to disseminate. Through the repre- 
sentative of [a newspaper another] Legation acts. 

One article written by an editor from conviction of 
his heart I am convinced, is of more value than tons of 
literature; and that the best type of propaganda to ex- 
plain America's views consists of personal and unoffi- 
cial relations with editors. 

Relations which could be of benefit to our cause I feel 
Mrs. Whitehouse could develop with the cloak which is 
furnished by this Communique, but if she were a recog- 
nized emissary from the American Committee on Public 
Information — from reaching such relations with the 
editors of newspapers, she would be precluded. 

Her intention is to present to Swiss officials her let- 
ters of introduction, but for a reply to this submission 
of our views, she has agreed to wait a reasonable period. 

In answer to official or business inquiries, she de- 
sires that Legation acknowledge her official position. 
To do this would place Legation in the position of 
g,cknowledging falsity of Communique sent out over 



Appendices 297 

my signature and prestige of legation would he in- 
jured thereby — especially would this he the case if dis- 
covered hy enemy. 

Discussion of the suhject with Creel is suggested by 
both her and myself and we recommend that conclusive 
directions be given to clarify the situation. She has 
given to Creel her views in No. 2§gg, February 8, 6 P.M. 

Wilson. 



APPENDIX X 

On discussion with editors of both sections of the 
Swiss press I have discovered that information which I 
can furnish Switzerland, as I have indicated before, is 
gratefully received, especially when a return service is 
connected with it. It is necessary for me to explain 
that my presence here is not in the interest of children 
and women, but that I am officially here to represent 
you and the activities of your committees. It is my opin- 
ion that in bringing my plans to success, I ought to 
present myself to the officers of the Swiss Government in 
Berne, this, in the present confused state of the situation, 
I cannot do is the opinion of both myself and Mr. 
Hugh Wilson. We differ mainly in that he is fearful of 
the effects of an open policy of furnishing news and I 
think that because of the essential likeness of the govern- 
ment of the U. S. and that of Switzerland such a policy 
of furnishing news would he of great value; and discus- 
sions which I have engaged in with officers of the govern- 
ment and newspaper men have helped this conviction. 
The German manner of dealing with this question which 
has brought discredit to the term ''propaganda'' re- 
sembles the other method, which Mr. Hugh Wilson 



298 A Year as a Government Agent 

suggests dangerously close. I do not want a public 
statement, hut under present conditions Mr. Hugh 
Wilson states that he would be forced to make a state- 
ment if he were to respond to official and business in- 
quiries, that my purpose here was to inquire into the 
conditions of women and children and that I was not 
here in the interests of your committee. The instructions 
of Mr. Hugh Wilson and the letters of appointment 
issued to me are directly opposed in sense. I have con- 
sented to wait a reasonable period until Mr. Hugh 
Wilson is informed by the State Department before I 
shall act in the sense of your recent telegram and begin 
my work as agreed between us. It is my opinion that 
the present state of af airs leaves myself and Mr. Wilson 
open to serious doubts. Until Mr. Wilson has received 
further instructions, he says he will not be able to turn 
over to me the wireless news service. I refer to a telegram 
of the Legation of Feb. 8th No. 2600, which gives the 
ideas of Mr. Wilson in this matter. 



APPENDIX XI 

American Legation, Berne. 

Reading of Telegram Received February ig, igi8. 

Cakly. 
Amlegation Berne. 

1506 February 16, 7 P.M. For Whitehouse from 
Creel Quote Motion picture campaign shipped today 
with operator stop James Kerney our Paris repre- 
sentative traveling same boat stop Also sending large 
collection photographs let your situation wait until 



Appendices 299 

{arrival of) Kerney and shipments when clear cut deci- 
sion will he made original instructions unaltered and 
President -personally instructed State Department of his 
approval of our plans hut think wise to wait while be- 
fore establishing office and presenting letters continue 
survey and unofficial contact stop Compub will send 
weekly cable news story signed by distinguished Ameri- 
can journalist and story to give fair picture weeks devel- 
opments America and be subject only regidar censorship 
authors name may be published stop Negotiating with 
several people to do this work stop Advice giving cable 
address {Kerney) will wire you upon his arrival end 
quote. 

Lansing. 



APPENDIX XII 

Code 
Sec state Washington. 

. . . February igth. . . . For Creel Quote Thanks 
for cable of i6th must have office to handle wireless 
service assume responsibility of taking one stop 

Whitehouse end quote. 

Wilson. 

APPENDIX XIII 

Telegram received March 9, 19 18. 

American Legation Berne 

For Whitehouse from Creel. Kerney is in Paris 
now with motion and still pictures for Szuitzerland. 



30O A Year as a Government Agent 

Get this material and examine carefully before final 
decision as to exhibition. Establish office without formal 
announcement of any kind. Directing Paris send cable 
service to you addressed Compub. Urge absolute har- 
mony with Legation and utmost caution but rely upon 
your judgment. 

Polk Acting. 

APPENDIX XIV 

Washington, March Jj, igi8. 

"33^7 March ij 4 P.M. For Whitehouse from 
Compub. As already cabled establish office in Switz- 
erland for independent handling motion pictures and 
cable news service. Register your Compub address at 
once. Swiss situation extremest delicacy so avoid Ger- 
man attack in emphasizing aims and activities. Your 
letters exceedingly helpful and urge continuance Present 
Rappard letters received and make every effort to have 
clear understanding with Swiss that no violations neu- 
trality is ifidisp ens able but simply better understand- 
ing of America.'^ 



Place Bellevue, 
Berne. 



APPENDIX XV 

March gth, igi8. 



My dear Mr. Stovall: 

At your request, I am writing you a resume of our 
conversation held on Friday morning March 8th. 
I explained first to you that I had been appointed by 



Appendices 301 

Mr. Creel, Chairman of the Committee on Public Infor- 
mation, as representative of that committee in Switzer- 
land. I showed you my letter of appointment, a copy 
of which I enclose. My duties are to establish a news 
service of various branches, to arrange to exhibit moving 
picture films, and to bring to the public, in every legiti- 
mate and tactful manner, authentic information and 
news about America, and to receive in turn and place 
news or articles about Switzerland. These were my 
instructions before leaving America. On arriving in 
Paris, January 2^rd, I was given a cable, which I 
showed you in our interview, and a copy of which I en- 
close. This cable quotes, (/) from Mr. Hugh Wilson, 
dated January i$th, to the State Department, and a 
reply signed by Mr. Polk. 

I showed you, also, and enclose herewith, copies of 
(2) my cable to Mr. Creel, referring to these telegrams 
and saying that our proposed work is legitimate, and 
that I refuse to work under false pretences. 
(5) A reply from Mr. Polk. 

{4) Copy of a joint cable sent by Mr. Wilson to the 
State Department and by me to Mr. Creel on Feb. 8th. 
(5) A cable from Mr. Creel saying that I, not Mr. 
Wilson, was to handle cable news and to institute 
work as agreed. 

{6) Reply from Mr. Creel, dated February i6th, to 
our joint cable of February 8th, saying that the President 
had told the State Department that he approved of our 
plans, that my original instructions stood and that 
otherwise I was to await clear-cut decision. Since 
then no clear-cut decisions or instructions have been 
received by me, or, as far as I know, by Mr. Wilson. 

During our conversation, after I had shown you the 



302 A Year as a Government Agent 

cables, you made two objections; first, to my having 
been appointed to do this work on the score of my sex, 
saying that in this country, a woman would not be well 
received on such business as mine, and also that woman 
suffrage is not looked upon with favor here. When I 
explained that I had not come to work in any way for 
woman suffrage here, you said I was known to be 
closely identified with that movement. I have assured 
you that in seeking to carry out my instructions, and 
in my business dealings, I had never felt at any disad- 
vantage because of my sex. I am, however, quite willing 
to accept a suggestion from you, if you write it to me, 
that I should offer my resignation to Mr. Creel, on the 
ground that you believe the appointment to have been a 
mistake, because I am a woman and a suffragist. 

Your second objection I cannot, as I told you, agree 
to: That such work as giving the Swiss people public 
information about the United States is dangerous and 
should not be undertaken. In this connection, you 
spoke particularly of the sensitive state of Switzerland 
at the present time. I believe that this work is impor- 
tant OAid necessary, particularly at this time, and that 
it can be and should be carried out in a thoroughly 
simple and honest manner. The question of my not 
being the person to do the work is an open one. I believe 
I have the necessary experience and qualifications to 
do it in a business-like and tactful manner; but the 
question of the work being done, as 1 explained to you, 
I consider settled by Mr. Creel's assertion in his cable 
of February i6th, that the plan has the approval of the 
President. I know that Mr. Hugh Wilson objects as 
strongly as you do to this policy. 

Jn our con'versation, you laid great emphasis upon 



Appendices 303 

my doing this work *^ unofficially'^ as a means of escap- 
ing from our difficulties. This has also been Mr. 
Hugh Wilson s attitude. You did not make clear to me 
what you mean by doing my work ''unofficially'' except 
that you especially objected to my '^ presenting" myself 
to the government. I want to repeat most emphatically, 
that I have had no wish to be presented in any way 
socially, officially or otherwise to any Government offi- 
cial, except as the pursuance of my duties might make 
it necessary. On the other hand, I cannot undertake to 
work for a Government Committee and to spend Govern- 
ment money except as a representative of that Committee. 
My work is of such a nature that a part of it must be 
done openly. I cannot approach editors to ask if they 
will take American news otherwise than as a representa- 
tive of the Committee which can furnish it. I have 
found also, that it is impossible to conduct my business 
without proper and official recognition. During my 
visit in Zurich, this present week, I tried in as quiet and 
unofficial manner as possible, to institute my work as 
instructed. I was met with the objection that Mr. Wilson 
of our Legation had discredited my authority to act, 
and I was advised, before attempting any further nego- 
tiations, to obtain as an offset to the suspicions aroused 
by Mr. Wilson, a letter from you recognizing my posi- 
tion and my right to act. I agree with my advisers that 
this is a necessary step, because the Committee on Public 
Information in Washington is a department whicK is 
not known to the Swiss people and in view of Mr. 
Hugh Wilson's opposition, it is necessary that I should 
be vouched for by some one who is known. In addition 
to this situation in Zurich, I have found it impossible 
to carry out Mr. Creel's instructions, to institute my 



304 A Year as a Government Agent 

work and handle the cable nezvsy because I have been 
absolutely unable to rent an office. Three times, I have 
been on the point of concluding arrangements. I had 
thought that obstructions to my renting had come per- 
haps from some department of the Swiss Government. 
I am now led to believe that I owe the difficulty entirely 
to the attitude taken by the Legation. Whatever the 
reason is, this difficulty may be overcome by a change 
of attitude on the part of the Legation and by your 
giving me a letter, such as was suggested in Zurich, 
stating that I am the accredited representative of the 
\ Committee on Public Information, a department of the 
Government of the United States, and that I have power 
to act in its behalf and that my chief duties are to give 
an opportunity to the public and to the newspapers to 
obtain authentic news from America. 

I have explained to Mr. Hugh Wilson and through 
cable to Mr. Creel that I want no public statement as to 
my position. But since the attitude of the Legation 
has not only operated to prevent the pursuance of my 
duties, but has directly or indirectly brought suspicion 
upon the character of my work, it may be necessary 
that I should now present myself to certain Government 
officials, with the simple explanation that my mission 
is one of good faith, and that I shall undertake no work 
which is not entirely legitimate in the eyes of the Swiss 
Government or satisfactory to it. 

I wish to say that the only opposition I have met at 
all in Switzerland, either on the score of my sex or to 
the carrying out of my plans, has come from the Lega- 
tion as represented by Mr. Hugh Wilson and Mr. 
Dulles and 7iow by you, yourself, on your return. I 
have found the Swiss people, both in French and Ger- 



Appendices 305 

man Switzerland, most interested in my plans of work 
and ready to help. 

You have told me that you have received no instruc- 
tions from the State Department in this matter; since, 
therefore, you are acting on your own initiative, in 
opposing this plan, which has the Presidents approval, 
I hope that in thinking it over you will conclude to 
withdraw from the attitude which is obstructing the 
work of my department, and that you will begin by 
giving me the letter I ask and the support I need. 

In case you reach no conclusion, or an unfavorable 
one, by Tuesday next, March 12th, and in case no 
definite instructions have come from Washington by 
that time, I shall leave for Paris in order to consult with 
Mr. Kerney, another representative of the Committee 
on Public Information, and in order to be more free to 
communicate with this committee in Washington. 

I hope, however, that this step on my part and the 
consequent delay to my work may be avoided. 

With appreciation of the kindness you wished to 
show in your offers of social courtesies, I am. 

Yours very truly, 

[Sgd] Vira B. Whitehouse. 



APPENDIX XVI ^ ,A^. 

" The President sanctions Mrs. W's plans and be- 
lieves she should begin work. Let her without 
formal announcement engage office, commence handlifig 
cable service, motion picture and other work. Mrs. W 
is not a secret agent nor is she planning violation of 
Swiss neutrality or intrigue by violent attacks on Ger- 
mans. Her only purpose is quiet distribution cable 
20 



3o6 A Year as a Government Agent 

news service^ motion picture campaign and pamphlet 
distribution.^* 



APPENDIX XVII 

American Embassy, Paris. 
Received 
March j/, lo P.M. 
3319 Blue Code 

Washington, 
March 75, 7 A.M. 
Amembassy 
Paris 

33ig March 13, y P.M. For Whitehouse from. 
Creel Forward to Berne if she has left Paris quote 
Legation promises all unofficial aid and attention but 
minister objects to issuance of formal letter recognizing 
you as representative of Committee with power to act 
in its behalf stop I think best not to press this point 
you have my letter of authorization and I prefer work 
inaugurated without connection with Legation or en- 
dorsement by it stop. 

Lansing. 

APPENDIX XVIII 

March i8th. 
Creel 

Impossible to do effective work in Switzerland with 
Legation blocking every attempt stop Instance last 
week in Zurich in trying to place articles and news was 
met with objection from Swiss that Legation had dis- 
credited my power to act stop In view of Legations 
attitude your letter of appointment insufficient because 



Appendices 307 

your committee unknown stop Reports to Washington 
from Legation regarding publicity situation should he 
viewed with doubt because of demonstrated prejudice 
instructions in your cable March i^th will doubtless 
confirm Legation in their hostility toward my work 
believing it impossible to achieve results under these 
conditions will not return to Switzerland please ac- 
cept my resignation shall await final instructions re- 
garding disposal of offices^ bank balance, etc., in Paris. 

Whitehouse — compub. 

APPENDIX XIX 

Compub Washington March 2^rd igi8. 

Returning to Berne to close affairs. Supplementing 
former cablegram, Legation offered me every social 
attention, but my desire was for serious work, and 
not to he entertained. I came to fight Germans, not 
American officials. Inasmuch as Legation acting ap- 
parently with approval of State department is so 
sensitive about any action that might offend our 
enemies, I think it best that nothing he made public 
nor circulated privately by any department at this time 
about situation. If any other decision reached, I ask 
that all cablegrams that have passed between us he 
published. — Whitehouse. 

APPENDIX XX 

Cable received in Paris, March 23, 19 18. 

For Whitehouse, Will Irwin in full charge of foreign 
educational work. Make future reports to him. While 



3o8 A Year as a Government Agent 

perhaps not advisable for you to return to Switzerland, 
consider you so valuable to our work in general that 
we wish you to please stay in Paris and cooperate with 
Mr. Kerney pending further instructions. — Creel. 



APPENDIX XXI 

March 26thy igi8. 
Whitehouse, Amlegation, Berne. 

Washington cable for you says they are very much 
distressed by your last message and that President 
endorsed fully plan to have you go ahead in Switzerland. 
Says they mean to do thing you want done. However, 
if you feel you have been so antagonized as to destroy 
your effectiveness in Switzerland, they are eager to have 
you handle definite jobs in France, after which you can 
go to England and Stockholm on special missions, if 
you desire. Personally, I hope you will remain in 
France for a time to help with work. — Kerney. 



APPENDIX XXII 

Washington, March 2^rd. 

For Mrs. Whitehouse. Much distressed by your last 
cable. After battles of some weeks during which Presi- 
dent came to my support, it was fully agreed that you 
should open office and go ahead with authority and I 
so cabled. If you desire to return to Switzerland, I 
will have to force Legation to change its attitude. If 
you think Legation will persist in secret to antagonize. 



Appendices 309 

however, or if its attitude has destroyed your effective- 
ness in Switzerland, then stay in Paris with Kerney. 
William Irwin is now handling foreign educational 
work and is very eager to have you handle certain definite 
jobs in France, after which you can go to London, 
England and Stockholm on special missions if you de- 
sire. Cable me fully and understand I mean to do the 
thing you want done. — Creel. 



APPENDIX XXIII 

Paris, March 2gth. 

Compub Washington. 

"'""^ 
Our recent cables have crossed. This is answer to 

yours March 2^rd, through Navintel. Have left Switz- 
erland, saying I might return. Believe work there 
highly important and should continue. Have estab- 
lished valuable relations and should like to complete ' 
task if possible, on honest basis. Do not feel my effec- \ 
tiveness has been destroyed, if Legation s misrepresenta- 
tions and suggestions of mystery about my work cease. 
Letter I asked from Stovall would insure it. Is it 
worth your while to force right attitude on part of Lega- 
tion? If not, to whom shall I turn over details of work 
there? As to other missions in France, England and 
Stockholm, should like to know definite details before 
deciding. Feel it would be of value for me to go to 
America, steamer sailing April 6th, for full discussion 
concerning work in France, Switzerland and Spain. 
Kerney approves this suggestion. Could return imme- 
diately if desirable. 

Whitehouse. 



3IO A Year as a Government Agent 

APPENDIX XXIV 

April 8th. 
American Consul 
Bordeaux 

Eighth Please deliver to Mrs. Whitehouse following 
message from Irwin Quote Husband finds it possible 
[Should have read, If you find it at all possible] to 
get along would prefer your staying in Berne because 
your work there would be more valuable to us than your 
work with the French. French High Commission re- 
ports that their Bureau in Berne has the highest regard 
for your work. 

Sharpe. 

APPENDIX XXV 

Compub Washington 

For Irwin: Steamer delayed at Bordeaux stop 
Have received CreeVs cable saying eager for me to re- 
main in Paris and yours saying you prefer my return- 
ing to Berne stop Have decided to sail on Niagara as 
planned not for personal or family reasons but be- 
cause my work here is so unsettled and because I believe 
a full report and conference with you and Creel will be 
of value and ultimately timesaving stop I agree that I 
would be of more value in Switzerland than in France 
and have already cabled Creel conditions under which I 
can return there namely that Legation should be forced 
to officially recognize my position stop I should also 
need a diplomatic passport in order to facilitate my 
working effectively stop Failing these things my efforts 
in Switzerland are so hampered I will not consider re- 
turning stop If conditions are met please arrange im- 



Appendices 311 

mediately for my return to Europe about May first as I 
shall reach America about April twenty-fifth stop 
Should like to bring back my stenographer Mary Dean 
and need an assistant who can translate English into 
best style German stop Suggest your giving to news- 
papers statement that I am returning for short stay in 
order to report. 

Whitehouse. 



APPENDIX XXVI 

The White House 

Washington 

2j May, igi8. 
My dear Mrs. Whitehouse: 

Mr. Creel informs me that you are leaving for Switz- 
erland again to resume the work already so intelligently 
initiated. I am glad to learn that your own convictions 
and investigations lead you to endorse the unreservedly 
American policy of absolute openness. We have noth- 
ing to conceal, no secret ambitions to further, and our 
activities in every foreign country are properly confined 
to a very frank exposition of America s war aims and 
national ideals. 

It is a distinct service that you are privileged to render 
your country, and I know that this will serve at once as 
a reward and an inspiration. 

Cordially and sincerely, 

Woodrow Wilson. 

Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, 
118 East j;6th Street, 
New York City. 



312 A Year as a Government Agent 

APPENDIX XXVII 

Committee on Public Information 
Washington, D. C, 

May 77, igi8. 

Mrs. Norman deR. Whitehouse, 
118 East ^6th Street, 
New York City, N. Y. 

My dear Mrs. Whitehouse, 

This is your authorization to represent the Committee 
on Public Information in Switzerland. In accordance 
with the instructions that you carry, and the desires of 
the Swiss Government itself, you are vested with full 
authority to speak for this Committee, and to act for it. 

Sincerely, 

George Creel . 

Chairman. 

APPENDIX XXVIII 

Sept. 24, igi8. 
Mr. Ellis Dresel, 
American Legation, 
Berne. 

My dear Mr. Dresel: 

Knowing that you are probably very busy with the 
Prisoners Committee I have just written to Mr. Picard, 
who I understand is a secretary of the War Trade 
Board and acts on your behalf at times. I have written 
to Mr. Picard to say that . . . I am in receipt 
of a number of commercial films through the pouch. 



Appendices 313 

from the Committee on Public Information in Wash- 
ington. The rights to Switzerland for these films have 
been given to the Committee as a patriotic contribution 
by the owners in America, and while they are not 
propaganda films themselves they have been sent to me 
for propaganda purposes, to enable me to place our 
propaganda films by combining with the commercial 
ones. I propose now to sell them to the Compagnie 
Generale du Cinematographe of Geneve on the conditions 
laid down by the Allied War Trade Board. I have 
asked for the copy of the agreement which is to be signed 
hy the purchasers of Allied films. I have asked also if 
there are any further formalities with which I should 
comply before turning the films over for use. 



APPENDIX XXIX 

September 25, IQ18. 
Blue Code 

Secstate Washington 

48gg . . . Important Sept. 26/g A.M. . . . For 
Wartrabord Quote Number ig2 question of control of 
cinema industry period Referring to fourth point of 
my telegram No. 18 j Legation 4.797 September ig rep- 
resentative here of compub now informs me that films 
which have been consigned to her direct are not for propa- 
ganda purposes but are commercial films period She 
states that she proposes to sell these films to the Com- 
pagnie Generale du Cinematographe Geneve and she 
requests that a copy of the form of undertaking to be 
signed by ultimate consignee of films as per Wartrabord 



314 -^ Year as a Government Agent 

Journal number twelve page twelve he communicated to 
her to he signed hy ahovenamed company 

Before taking such action comma I should like your 
specific instructions as question of principle seems in- 
volved colon First under instructions received from 
you and according to instructions page thirteen of 
Wartrahord Journal cited commercial films are to he 
addressed to Wartrahord representative not to repre- 
sentative of compuh Second the form of undertaking 
above referred to is entitled quote Agreement with the 
United States Wartrahord end quote and specifically 
refers to the release of the films to the consignee hy your 
representative Third although Compagnie Generate du 
Cinematographe is on whitelist and is being favorably 
considered hy me comma yet policy heretofore adopted 
and obviously to he followed is not arbitrary selection of 
ultimate consignee of films on this side comma but such 
consignee should he indicated to you in ordinary com- 
mercial ways hy the applicant for export licenses on 
the export license application form 

I suggest therefore that as to films in question instruc- 
tions he sent to representative of compuh here and myself 
period I further suggest that in future all films be 
consigned as under inner quote first endinner quote above 
Dresel unquote 

Stovall. 

APPENDIX XXX 

Sec state Washington 

For Sisson from Whitehouse. 

Quote No. lo^i. September twenty-eight. Question of 
complications with Wartrahord about films stop Be- 



Appendices 315 

fore sending you cable ten sixteen July seventeenth ask- 
ing for commercial films to carry our propaganda films 
I obtained approval of request contained in cable from 
acting Wartrabord representative here Heck comma 
Dresel being absent stop Wartrabord representative 
Dresel now considers situation confused because com- 
mercial films from you are consigned to me have of- 
fered to transfer them to him or accept any formality 
necessary to expedite matter stop Before making de- 
cisions he awaits answer to his cable one ninety-two 
September twenty-sixth to Wartrabord Washington 
Unquote 



APPENDIX XXXI 

Legation of the United States of America 

Berne, October 18, igi8. 

Mrs. Vira B. Whitehouse, 
I J Steinerstrasse, 
Berne. 

Dear Mrs. Whitehouse: 

This office has today received two telegrams from 
Washington concerning the question of films, and I 
now beg to give you the following information in ac- 
cordance therewith: 

With regard to the commercial films received by you 
and as to which you exchanged some correspondence with 
Mr. Dresel, this office is instructed, to work out a satisfac- 
tory arrangement with you. Consequently, if agreeable 
to you, it is suggested that you should deliver over these 
films according to instructions received by you, having 



3i6 A Year as a Government Agent 

signed by the ultimate consignee a copy of the form of 
undertaking which was communicated to you by this 
office. 



Very truly yours. 

War Trade Board, 
By Andre Picard. 



APPENDIX XXXII 

American Legation 
Berne 

Nov. 7, igi8. 
Dear Mrs. Whitehouse: 

In order to give the widest publicity to the enclosed 
appeal from the President of the United States to the 
peoples of the Constituent Nations of Austria-Hungary 
which have achieved liberation from the yoke of the 
AustrO'Hungarian Empire, I trust that the representa- 
tives of the Allied Powers who may be in control of the 
lines of communication in Austria-Hu^igary will facili- 
tate the passage of the messenger whom you may accredit 
for the purpose of publishing this message in these 
countries. 

Yours very truly, 

P. A. Stovall, 

U. S. Minister. 



THE END 



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